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| I know this is not fully fair to Sony, but it made me laugh. They do seem to contradict themselves quite a bit, but I know all sides of this console war have done so at one time. One would think you would have your act together a little bit more for E3.
Sony at E3
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| There is no reason for games today to have so many buttons. None. You can not convince me otherwise.
I was at Best Buy the other day when I heard a kid exclaim that he was not doing well at his game because "there were not enough buttons to assign his moves too" and "that he should not have to hit a series of buttons to execute a special move" The reason that you are doing bad at that game is because you are terrible at games.
As a veteran Street Fighter 2 player, this made me weep. There were few greater joys than being able to pull off a special move after a certain series of buttons. There was a certain pride to be had in the fact that you could pull it off. Apparently those days are gone.
Let's take a look at one of the simplest, yet thought out, control schemes of all times. In honor of Jenna, Super Mario Bros. 3.
If you really think about it, the old mario games (SMB1, 2, 3) were not all that great. You jumped around and landed on enemies, shot fireballs, and went into mysterious pipes. There was nothing extravagent about the old marios, yet what made them great was their simplicity. You did not have large complicated controller schemes that you had to configure to make the game as comfortable as you can get knowing that a twitch in any finger can result in doom. Let us take a look a SMB 3 control scheme:
The Law
Directional Pad - Move character/go down pipe
Select - Choose number players at beginnning. After this, it is wasted space. And I don't want to hear that you could use it to "end" the game after you lose all of your lives for you should not be playing Mario if you die.
B Button - Run / Shoot Fire/Hammer
A Button - Jump
"but Richard, what if you wanted to change the A and B buttons around?"
Back in the day of good video games, there was actually thought put into what buttons were going to do what. If you have played SMB 3 think about how your thumb rests on the A/B buttons. There was thought put into what you would be doing. Player studies showed that using the top of the thumb had no cramping and that position could be used to quickly hit a button at the middle of the thumb. Nintendo knew that true gamers would want to do one thing in a game and that is RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! and assigned said skill to the B button. This control scheme had thought put into it, unlike some of today's games.
My newest game, Dirge of Cerberus, does not have a well though out control scheme. While you can change the controls of this, I should not have to waste my time doing so. When I want to play a game, I don't want to sit there and think about how I want to make the controls easier, I want the developers to have already done that for me. We need to ditch these huge controlers and return to simpler days.
Lets take a look at the history of buttons. From the 1 Atari button to the 11 button XBox 360 controller.
The pink line represents the quality of games. Notice the intersection at the Sega Genesis.
There has been a steady increase in the number of buttons on controllers since day one. There is no reason for this. They should stop at the Playstaion 2 amount (12). It currently holds the highest number of buttons and does not need any more.
And to end arguments, the Gamecube controller is the best one so far. Just the right size and shape with a giant A button for all your quick response needs.
Remember that Game industry! Comfortable, no more buttons than necesary, and no bigger than a super nintendo deck.
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| I have decided that I am an angst filled gamer. There are really no games out there that are all that good. The gaming industry has decided to put more effort into graphics and "casual" games than to make anything truly solid anymore. I know that there are solid games out there today on the shelves, but not enough. Everyone is now concerend with either terrible first person shooters, re-hashed sports games, or mediocre war games to look around and see that there once was an empire of games that were unique and innovative. They settle for one thing they find fun, do not broaden their horizons, and the game industry just caters to them.
I, a gamer since age 5, am starting to get bored with todays games. I have started playing my older games again. Games that challeneged us and in some cases touched our emotions. The point of this blog will be to expand horizons and put any useless junk I may want to.
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