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Showing posts from December, 2022

Control Method

The controller. This all-important tool often gets overlooked and seldom gets its due. Gaming consoles each offer their own take on how the controller should be shaped and feel, but even the days of the NES third-parties designed controllers to meet the demands of gamers.  Button Placement  The ease at which you can pull a trigger or press a combination of buttons can be the difference between success and failure. Early on video game controllers adopted an inline button arrangement. For example the NES controller sets its “A” and “B” buttons side-by-side. So did the Turbo GFX 16 and Genesis controllers (the Genesis controller had a slight curve to it). Next came the SNES controller, adding shoulder triggers and two additional fire buttons in a diamond configuration that is now standard. The diamond configuration was perfect for platformers that commonly employed a run and jump button. It felt like such a natural motion to hold the run button down with the tip of your thumb only to tap