A shorter (10 minute) TL;DW video from LGR 6 years ago if anyone here doesn't want to dedicate over an hour to this video or find Rerez's personality unappealing. LGR's video focuses on the...
A shorter (10 minute) TL;DW video from LGR 6 years ago if anyone here doesn't want to dedicate over an hour to this video or find Rerez's personality unappealing. LGR's video focuses on the company and not the individual products that this video does.
I didn't watch through the whole thing (1:12 ??? what is this a rant about how the MCU has gone woke?) but despite it's shit reputation with controllers, Mad Katz made some really good fighting...
I didn't watch through the whole thing (1:12 ??? what is this a rant about how the MCU has gone woke?) but despite it's shit reputation with controllers, Mad Katz made some really good fighting sticks which I didn't see covered here. For example, when SF4 came out, I knew a ton of people who had their TE stick which I believe was well received in the FGC, hell even Daigo was sponsored by Mad Katz and used their gear.
Were they really good or were they just good in comparison to the competition? To my memory (as someone who was never part of the fighting game community), there were a bunch of really bad ones...
Were they really good or were they just good in comparison to the competition? To my memory (as someone who was never part of the fighting game community), there were a bunch of really bad ones coming out around that and the only big (i.e. non-niche) pre-made option that was any good was Hori.
I got one of their doofy shortened and WWE-branded PS3 fightsticks in 2013 for $50 to learn Skullgirls and swapped out their buttons for Sanwas - I still use it today whenever I want to play...
I got one of their doofy shortened and WWE-branded PS3 fightsticks in 2013 for $50 to learn Skullgirls and swapped out their buttons for Sanwas - I still use it today whenever I want to play fighting or arcade games. Though The Rock looked at my left hand funny and I ripped the label off, so it's all dusty... Gotta sand it and repaint it.
Funny you mention Hori but I actually used a Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 SA way back then (don't play fighting games anymore) but all my friends were using Mad Katz TE sticks. I preferred the TE stick...
Funny you mention Hori but I actually used a Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 SA way back then (don't play fighting games anymore) but all my friends were using Mad Katz TE sticks. I preferred the TE stick but I couldn't afford it on my grad student budget as I believe the TE stick was more expensive.
In addition Mad Katz was far more accessible ( I want to say I got my Hori stick off ebay after a lot of waiting) and as others stated, was a good configuration for modding. It also had some nice QOL things like cable storage. I can't speak for all of Mad Katz sticks but my general impression is that they made some good stuff back then.
IIRC at least for the TE they sourced the stick from Sanwa, and in particular they used the JLF-TP-8YT which is standard in the Japanese arcade cab. Fun fact: the JLF-TP-8YT has a restriction...
IIRC at least for the TE they sourced the stick from Sanwa, and in particular they used the JLF-TP-8YT which is standard in the Japanese arcade cab.
Fun fact: the JLF-TP-8YT has a restriction plate that can be rotated so that the stick movement is limited to 4 direction. It's ideal for puzzle game such as Tetris or Puyo Puyo.
I for one was really surprised that their PS2 controllers supported analogue buttons. I seem to remember a lot of third-party controllers not having that feature. I'm also surprised that anyone...
I for one was really surprised that their PS2 controllers supported analogue buttons. I seem to remember a lot of third-party controllers not having that feature.
I'm also surprised that anyone remembers the PS2 had analogue buttons. I have no idea why every controller doesn't have that feature. It's not like the implementation was terribly expensive.
It's not terribly ergonomic / there's no common use case for it? (the only one I remember is aiming in Metal Gear Solid 2). The Quest touch controller do have capacitive button though, even though...
I have no idea why every controller doesn't have that feature. It's not like the implementation was terribly expensive.
It's not terribly ergonomic / there's no common use case for it? (the only one I remember is aiming in Metal Gear Solid 2).
The Quest touch controller do have capacitive button though, even though they're not analogue (it's just sensing if the finger is on the button or not).
I seem to recall X to drive being kind of common in PS1/PS2 games before we transitioned to the modern standard of triggers for this. For that matter, X to shoot also happened occasionally if I...
I seem to recall X to drive being kind of common in PS1/PS2 games before we transitioned to the modern standard of triggers for this. For that matter, X to shoot also happened occasionally if I remember right.
Yeah, effectively the Xbox controller changed how people used the shoulder buttons by swapping to a trigger style instead of treating it like yet another face button, and shooters took off to...
Yeah, effectively the Xbox controller changed how people used the shoulder buttons by swapping to a trigger style instead of treating it like yet another face button, and shooters took off to become the dominant genre thanks to Halo's runaway success. Halo gets a lot of credit for redefining the standard control scheme for shooters by popularizing twin-stick controls but its influence on how people understand controller ergonomics is understated.
The DualShock 2 arguably proved the utility of analogue inputs but the Xbox controller showed that triggers were the way forward. It's understandable why analogue face buttons got phased out in favour of analogue trigger input. You just don't need that many analogue inputs for most games. Even the Metal Gear Solid games had it limited to just two of the four buttons IIRC.
The Dreamcast controller is the one that introduced analog triggers two years before the Xbox. But given how things went for the Dreamcast I guess it’s no surprise that’s been forgotten 😞 Plus...
The Dreamcast controller is the one that introduced analog triggers two years before the Xbox. But given how things went for the Dreamcast I guess it’s no surprise that’s been forgotten 😞
Plus you’re probably right about shooters on the Xbox being what popularized the analog trigger use. I’m not sure if there were FPS on Dreamcast with a similar control scheme - I mostly think of the triggers in relation to driving games.
Looking it up, it seems Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast used the triggers for acceleration/braking. That seems pretty ahead of its time. I never had access to a Dreamcast contemporaneously—it seemed like...
Looking it up, it seems Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast used the triggers for acceleration/braking. That seems pretty ahead of its time. I never had access to a Dreamcast contemporaneously—it seemed like nobody really owned one in this region—so it did sail by, unfortunately.
I know there were rumours about a Dreamcast/Xbox connection, I wouldn't be surprised if the original Xbox controller was somewhat based on the Dreamcast one.
Yup! Xbox took the Dreamcast controller design almost wholesale. Only source I could find was this, but at the time it was an obvious (and to me, very welcome) influence. At the time, the...
Yup! Xbox took the Dreamcast controller design almost wholesale. Only source I could find was this, but at the time it was an obvious (and to me, very welcome) influence.
At the time, the Dreamcast controller was the best one I’d ever used (the triggers were incredible), and the Xbox iterated on it, removing the mostly useless VMU slots and adding a much-needed second stick (and some not needed and ultimately short-lived black and white buttons). I understand why people don’t like “The Duke,” but as someone with large hands it remains my favorite controller of all time.
Agreed, I always hated the button placements on the S controller. I'm glad they took a page from the DualShock and turned the black/white buttons into the bumpers for the Xbox 360 controller. I've...
Agreed, I always hated the button placements on the S controller. I'm glad they took a page from the DualShock and turned the black/white buttons into the bumpers for the Xbox 360 controller. I've also appreciated the improved ergonomics in every generation of proceeding Xbox controllers, the current Series X one feels very solid in the hand in a way that even the Xbox 360 iteration didn't.
The extra buttons were actually taken from Sega’s earlier designs, specifically the Saturn’s 3D controller. The 3D controller is still one of my favorite designs; six buttons work a heck of a lot...
The extra buttons were actually taken from Sega’s earlier designs, specifically the Saturn’s 3D controller.
The 3D controller is still one of my favorite designs; six buttons work a heck of a lot better in fighters, and the joystick is magnetic with a long and smooth throw for precision movements. The springs for the joystick and triggers have the perfect tension for me personally, and the buttons are a lot more tap-friendly than the Dreamcast’s design, both in terms of how they feel to press and the size of the plunger. I’m sad that I don’t have one anymore but I have a hard time justifying the prices that I’ve seen on the used market.
Their implementation in games was usually pretty bad. I still get tripped up when playing MGS3 on any platform that uses the pressure-sensitive buttons. They are unintuitive because buttons don't...
Their implementation in games was usually pretty bad. I still get tripped up when playing MGS3 on any platform that uses the pressure-sensitive buttons. They are unintuitive because buttons don't feel analog.
On the PS2 in particular, this feature was meant to make up for the lack of analog triggers. Ultimately though, analog triggers are just better, which is probably why the feature went even more ignored on the original Xbox.
I disagree with you. Buttons don't feel analog to you because you are used to them not being. But kids mash in those buttons when they want their actions to have oomph for ages until they realize...
I disagree with you. Buttons don't feel analog to you because you are used to them not being. But kids mash in those buttons when they want their actions to have oomph for ages until they realize it's not making much of a difference.
On the PS2, literally all of the buttons were analog except for the start, select, and mode buttons. The triggers and direction buttons are all analog.
Implementation was scattershot, but that's true of almost every control method. Motion controls have a much worse track record. But the problem with analog buttons being forgotten is that the games that used them are worse for their omission. Evergrace, for instance, is missing some of the combat strategy when played all digital, which is pretty big for a game from From Software. And new games will not have the ability to implement gameplay mechanics that involve them if they don't have the option to begin with - needing to include a custom controller to play a game is a huge hurdle to overcome.
Buttons aren't well suited to analog control. It feels very unclear where the end and beginning of the range is. It isn't intuitive to feel how lightly you can touch it and still register an...
Buttons aren't well suited to analog control. It feels very unclear where the end and beginning of the range is. It isn't intuitive to feel how lightly you can touch it and still register an input, or how hard you have to mash it to get the maximum input. Triggers and sticks don't have that issue. You get very clear visual and tactile feedback when you're at zero and when you're at maximum.
That's the main reason they've never been appealing for me.
Motion controls have also largely gone the way of the dodo, with the exception of gyro aiming, because they aren't very precise and lack good tactile feedback. Even gyro aiming needs a lot of...
Motion controls have also largely gone the way of the dodo, with the exception of gyro aiming, because they aren't very precise and lack good tactile feedback. Even gyro aiming needs a lot of filtering and smoothing to not make the user think they have parkinson's, which makes it less responsive than something like a mouse.
But kids mash in those buttons when they want their actions to have oomph for ages until they realize it's not making much of a difference.
I think that's part of it, but the other issue is that rubber dome buttons have a clear, distinct actuation point, whereas other forms of analog input like joysticks and triggers offer a continuous spectrum
I've played a lot of MGS 2 and MGS 3, so I think I would have gotten used to them. At the end of the day, a trigger is a more intuitive and precise form of analog input. Couple that with the fact that I've never seen a game that needs more than 6 analog axis at a given time, and there just isn't a pressing need to make the buttons themselves analog.
It was a good mouse. The problem with Mad Catz is that they did not pivot to making quality peripherals until it was too late to save the company. They had such a poor reputation that by the time...
It was a good mouse. The problem with Mad Catz is that they did not pivot to making quality peripherals until it was too late to save the company. They had such a poor reputation that by the time they launched something good, people wrote it off.
A shorter (10 minute) TL;DW video from LGR 6 years ago if anyone here doesn't want to dedicate over an hour to this video or find Rerez's personality unappealing. LGR's video focuses on the company and not the individual products that this video does.
I didn't watch through the whole thing (1:12 ??? what is this a rant about how the MCU has gone woke?) but despite it's shit reputation with controllers, Mad Katz made some really good fighting sticks which I didn't see covered here. For example, when SF4 came out, I knew a ton of people who had their TE stick which I believe was well received in the FGC, hell even Daigo was sponsored by Mad Katz and used their gear.
Were they really good or were they just good in comparison to the competition? To my memory (as someone who was never part of the fighting game community), there were a bunch of really bad ones coming out around that and the only big (i.e. non-niche) pre-made option that was any good was Hori.
They were a solid base configuration and easily moddable, so they were a hot commodity at the time.
I got one of their doofy shortened and WWE-branded PS3 fightsticks in 2013 for $50 to learn Skullgirls and swapped out their buttons for Sanwas - I still use it today whenever I want to play fighting or arcade games. Though The Rock looked at my left hand funny and I ripped the label off, so it's all dusty... Gotta sand it and repaint it.
Funny you mention Hori but I actually used a Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 SA way back then (don't play fighting games anymore) but all my friends were using Mad Katz TE sticks. I preferred the TE stick but I couldn't afford it on my grad student budget as I believe the TE stick was more expensive.
In addition Mad Katz was far more accessible ( I want to say I got my Hori stick off ebay after a lot of waiting) and as others stated, was a good configuration for modding. It also had some nice QOL things like cable storage. I can't speak for all of Mad Katz sticks but my general impression is that they made some good stuff back then.
IIRC at least for the TE they sourced the stick from Sanwa, and in particular they used the JLF-TP-8YT which is standard in the Japanese arcade cab.
Fun fact: the JLF-TP-8YT has a restriction plate that can be rotated so that the stick movement is limited to 4 direction. It's ideal for puzzle game such as Tetris or Puyo Puyo.
I for one was really surprised that their PS2 controllers supported analogue buttons. I seem to remember a lot of third-party controllers not having that feature.
I'm also surprised that anyone remembers the PS2 had analogue buttons. I have no idea why every controller doesn't have that feature. It's not like the implementation was terribly expensive.
It's not terribly ergonomic / there's no common use case for it? (the only one I remember is aiming in Metal Gear Solid 2).
The Quest touch controller do have capacitive button though, even though they're not analogue (it's just sensing if the finger is on the button or not).
I remember quite a few games where intensity of attacks were set by the amount of force on the buttons. Using them was uncommon but not exactly rare.
I seem to recall X to drive being kind of common in PS1/PS2 games before we transitioned to the modern standard of triggers for this. For that matter, X to shoot also happened occasionally if I remember right.
Yeah, effectively the Xbox controller changed how people used the shoulder buttons by swapping to a trigger style instead of treating it like yet another face button, and shooters took off to become the dominant genre thanks to Halo's runaway success. Halo gets a lot of credit for redefining the standard control scheme for shooters by popularizing twin-stick controls but its influence on how people understand controller ergonomics is understated.
The DualShock 2 arguably proved the utility of analogue inputs but the Xbox controller showed that triggers were the way forward. It's understandable why analogue face buttons got phased out in favour of analogue trigger input. You just don't need that many analogue inputs for most games. Even the Metal Gear Solid games had it limited to just two of the four buttons IIRC.
The Dreamcast controller is the one that introduced analog triggers two years before the Xbox. But given how things went for the Dreamcast I guess it’s no surprise that’s been forgotten 😞
Plus you’re probably right about shooters on the Xbox being what popularized the analog trigger use. I’m not sure if there were FPS on Dreamcast with a similar control scheme - I mostly think of the triggers in relation to driving games.
Looking it up, it seems Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast used the triggers for acceleration/braking. That seems pretty ahead of its time. I never had access to a Dreamcast contemporaneously—it seemed like nobody really owned one in this region—so it did sail by, unfortunately.
I know there were rumours about a Dreamcast/Xbox connection, I wouldn't be surprised if the original Xbox controller was somewhat based on the Dreamcast one.
Yup! Xbox took the Dreamcast controller design almost wholesale. Only source I could find was this, but at the time it was an obvious (and to me, very welcome) influence.
At the time, the Dreamcast controller was the best one I’d ever used (the triggers were incredible), and the Xbox iterated on it, removing the mostly useless VMU slots and adding a much-needed second stick (and some not needed and ultimately short-lived black and white buttons). I understand why people don’t like “The Duke,” but as someone with large hands it remains my favorite controller of all time.
Agreed, I always hated the button placements on the S controller. I'm glad they took a page from the DualShock and turned the black/white buttons into the bumpers for the Xbox 360 controller. I've also appreciated the improved ergonomics in every generation of proceeding Xbox controllers, the current Series X one feels very solid in the hand in a way that even the Xbox 360 iteration didn't.
The extra buttons were actually taken from Sega’s earlier designs, specifically the Saturn’s 3D controller.
The 3D controller is still one of my favorite designs; six buttons work a heck of a lot better in fighters, and the joystick is magnetic with a long and smooth throw for precision movements. The springs for the joystick and triggers have the perfect tension for me personally, and the buttons are a lot more tap-friendly than the Dreamcast’s design, both in terms of how they feel to press and the size of the plunger. I’m sad that I don’t have one anymore but I have a hard time justifying the prices that I’ve seen on the used market.
Their implementation in games was usually pretty bad. I still get tripped up when playing MGS3 on any platform that uses the pressure-sensitive buttons. They are unintuitive because buttons don't feel analog.
On the PS2 in particular, this feature was meant to make up for the lack of analog triggers. Ultimately though, analog triggers are just better, which is probably why the feature went even more ignored on the original Xbox.
I disagree with you. Buttons don't feel analog to you because you are used to them not being. But kids mash in those buttons when they want their actions to have oomph for ages until they realize it's not making much of a difference.
On the PS2, literally all of the buttons were analog except for the start, select, and mode buttons. The triggers and direction buttons are all analog.
Implementation was scattershot, but that's true of almost every control method. Motion controls have a much worse track record. But the problem with analog buttons being forgotten is that the games that used them are worse for their omission. Evergrace, for instance, is missing some of the combat strategy when played all digital, which is pretty big for a game from From Software. And new games will not have the ability to implement gameplay mechanics that involve them if they don't have the option to begin with - needing to include a custom controller to play a game is a huge hurdle to overcome.
Buttons aren't well suited to analog control. It feels very unclear where the end and beginning of the range is. It isn't intuitive to feel how lightly you can touch it and still register an input, or how hard you have to mash it to get the maximum input. Triggers and sticks don't have that issue. You get very clear visual and tactile feedback when you're at zero and when you're at maximum.
That's the main reason they've never been appealing for me.
Motion controls have also largely gone the way of the dodo, with the exception of gyro aiming, because they aren't very precise and lack good tactile feedback. Even gyro aiming needs a lot of filtering and smoothing to not make the user think they have parkinson's, which makes it less responsive than something like a mouse.
I think that's part of it, but the other issue is that rubber dome buttons have a clear, distinct actuation point, whereas other forms of analog input like joysticks and triggers offer a continuous spectrum
I've played a lot of MGS 2 and MGS 3, so I think I would have gotten used to them. At the end of the day, a trigger is a more intuitive and precise form of analog input. Couple that with the fact that I've never seen a game that needs more than 6 analog axis at a given time, and there just isn't a pressing need to make the buttons themselves analog.
I loved their computer mouse. The R.A.T. 3 was an awesome mouse when I had one 10 years ago.
It was a good mouse. The problem with Mad Catz is that they did not pivot to making quality peripherals until it was too late to save the company. They had such a poor reputation that by the time they launched something good, people wrote it off.
I think my brother had something similar, durable computer mice are hard to come by and this has been a thing since computers have existed.
Ah mad catz, the controller for younger siblings.