I’ve been a big fan of joysticks since I first took hold of that shaft attached to a flat box which made up the main controller for the Atari 2600. This healthy respect for the joystick as a video game controller went up a notch in the late 80s when arcades started sprouting in my corner of the world.
During this time, on the other side of the world, video game consoles were coming out. These consoles didn’t come with joysticks as controllers but something called D-pads, an adaptation of the arcade controller sans the stick. The joystick was replaced by a button shaped like a cross that allowed movement much like a joystick, eight directions: north, east, south, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest.
I remember the time Nintendo started marketing the Nintendo Entertainment System (repackaged in some Asian countries as the Nintendo Family Computer), bundling it with two hot video games at the time, Super Mario Brothers and Hudson’s Adventure Island. The controller that came with the Famicom felt clumsy in my hands. I found myself longing for a joystick, primarily to make my adventures in Super Mario Brothers more palatable.
So we went out to a shopping center to look for a joystick for the Famicom. Of course, we failed to find one. The closest thing we found was a joystick-like contraption that took the place of the cross-shaped button. A few hours of playing Super Mario Brothers using the stub was enough to drive me bonkers. “It’s not a joystick!”
I think that was what forced me, and probably a thousand other players, to adapt—and adapt fast—to the controller of the next generation, the D-pad. Of course, there’s also the fact that it’s hard to play new games using the joystick.
What a surprise! I’ve just discovered that I suck at Space Invaders, a couple of days after learning that Frogger isn’t as easy to play now as it was back in the 80s.
It’s a surprise because I play Chicken Invaders, an arcade-like PC game that parodies Space Invaders. Needless to say, this spinoff is just as successful as the game it mimics. Hooray for Interaction Studios.
Going back to our topic, I played Space Invaders not on the Atari 2600 (on which I spent countless hours kicking alien butt back in the 80s), but on a Flash animation version made by the same guys that developed the Frogger version I mentioned in my previous post.
The Flash version isn’t as hard as the original. This is probably because in the Flash PC version, you get more mobility for your spacecraft courtesy of the keyboard compared to the 80s arcade and Atari versions of the game which made use of the joystick.
What makes the original version more palatable than this copycat is the sound. In this Flash version, you won’t hear the distinct chug-chug-chug sound that gets faster as the aliens move a notch down, to a point that it’s already unnerving.
Unfortunately for me and a handful of my fans, which include my wife, my daughter and a few relatives, I didn’t get far in my first Frogger jump in nearly two decades.
Here’s how my little Frogger looked like after a few jumps:
SPLAT!
Sigh. Not to worry, though. I’m sure I’ll get my fingers working to perfection in a few hours, and get my name up on that high score list.
Oh, in case you’re wondering … this Flash animation version of Frogger, an arcade game introduced in 1981, is not sanctioned by developer Konami. It is, however, a fitting tribute to the original and a classic in its own right.
Think you have what it takes? Here, go knock yourself out:
Here’s yet another take on the history of video games:
Great production. Hey, what else can I say? Wait! I need to ask this question: Why the hell did the video jump from the 1980s to the 1990s? I’m sure I am not the only one asking this.
Actually, this has nothing to do with Saberwulf’s suffering at the hands of Orchid in the side-scrolling video game classic Killer Instinct. It also has nothing to do with Orchid flashing her bumpers at the end of a very long combo. It does, however, have everything to do with my reaction to the video below:
Although I laud KIG666’s effort at trashing his opponent with an 80-hit ultimate combo, I have to say that the way he executed the combo was rather, uhmm, dull. It’s repetitive, and nothing reeks mundane more than a repetition of moves. Unfortunately, the limitation on executable moves is the software’s fault, I’m sure.
To highlight my point, here’s a video of Killer Instinct’s Jago dealing the same amount of punishment with an 80-hit ultra combo. Yes, it’s still repetitive, but notice how the player changes tact at the end.
At the risk of sounding exactly like a raving lunatic, I’m finally going to bare to the public one of my most well-kept secrets: I whined, whimpered, smashed my head into my bedroom’s wall, kicked down everything I saw, cried like a little school girl, and screamed until I turned blue just to force my Mom and Dad to buy me a widescreen Game & Watch.
No, not recently! Duh. Back when I was, oh, hmmm, eight years old … I think. Anyway, I also need to tell you that I ended up empty handed that day—no Game & Watch, no chocolates, and of course, no trip to the nearest McDonald’s. Bummer.
Oh, yeah, you can call me a spoiled brat as many times as you want. I’m sure you did the exact same thing, probably even worse, just to get those shiny handhelds. Heck, you may even still be doing it, just to get a new Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii. The horror. Haha.
Want to see what turned me into a mild-mannered boy into a raving lunatic?
Ever wonder how the modern video game console controller came to be? Well, thanks to the ingenious Sock Master, we now have a pretty good idea. Here’s a little tidbit from his “study” entitled “Sock Master’s Game Console Controller Family Tree”:
How did the current home-console controllers come to be? How have they evolved? You may have noticed some similarities between the current generation controllers, or between them and the previous generations of controllers. So, how do they all tie together?
Let’s try to find out. I’ve put together a chart, or controller family tree, that tries to connect all the current console controllers with their predecessors. Firstly, I don’t think anyone else has tried to do something similar on the Web, and secondly, none of the manufacturers actually come out and tell you who they’re borrowing ideas from. This means that a lot of the information presented here is my opinion. I try to keep things accurate, using facts I know, but also making some of my own conclusions where no hard evidence is available.
Suffice it to say that Sock Master has done a good job at assembling his little project, from the old school Atari 2600 joystick to the sensational Nintendo Wiimote.
Ahh, another Max Payne video. This one, however, shows a neat little trick that will change the entire Chapter 2 of Part 1 into a rat extermination quest. At the opening sequence of the chapter, arm yourself with a grenade, chuck it into the gap of broken tiles in the wall, and run like crazy, You won’t get far, though, because Max will be whisked to an alternate universe where rats are armed to the teeth with Desert Eagles. LoL.
Anyway, here’s the video:
I really need to try this one of these days. Hilarious!
I’ve been paying extra attention to one of video gamedom’s most beloved heroine’s of late, first on my PC and then on my neighbor’s rickety Playstation. I’m a late bloomer when it comes to Tomb Raider, you see—I only started noticing Lady Lara Croft’s, uhmm, video games when they were already classified as classics. Duh.
Anyway, I found that playing Tomb Raider released a lot of tension, especially during bouts with problems life throws at you every now and then. In my case, it was the hospitalization of my daughter, Cesky, last week due to pneumonia. Each day that passed by that Cesky was in the hospital, I’d hie on over to the house to do some work, including writing for two of b5media’s Video Game Channel blogs, Re:Retro and MMOtaku.
So it was in this fashion that I found Lara Croft again … a little off time from my jaunts in MMORPGs (I prefer playing MMORPGs with my wife, and during those sad and lonely days, she had to attend to Cesky at the hospital).
On Cesky’s last day at the hospital, however, I had to break my addiction to the sexy video game vixen, and what better way than to access a video game cheat that would make Lara Croft explode. Goodbye, Tomb Raider.
As I said in a previous post, Super Mario World is replete with glitches. Wish I played it more back in the days when the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was still the “IN” console. Also in the last article, I showed you a video of a glitch involving Mario, Yoshi, an apple, a feather or a star, and a lot of replays. This time around, though, it’s a video of some guys making a big fuss out of a glitch in the Super Mario World program that gave them access to what is apparently a test subroutine.
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