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Gaming Lexicon: Paddle or Controller? Is this a region thing?

CNY for me. Syracuse. My kids babysitter is like 22 and she said .. "oh i hate this board.." a few days ago while i was playing New Super Mario Bros on the Wii U.. i was like what ..is a board..?



My good friend that lives here in Syracuse is from NYC, and he uses "Paddles" for controllers. He will say "yeah i got a new paddle for my Xbox.". or "hey can i borrow an extra paddle for the weekend." I'm used to it now.. but MAN so weird.. like i remember Atari Pong and Tennis paddles.. but i never called gamepads/controllers "Paddles"
I have lived in Syracuse for my entire life. Haven't heard those terms ever used.
 
a paddle is a specific type of controller. It's like a square/rectangle thing.

here you'd normally hear controller, maybe handset or pad (short for gamepad not paddle) occasionally.

Never heard board in my life, can't see it being relevant to anything other than classic arcade games like pacman or donkey kong.

Never heard anyone use man instead of life. It sounds like the type of thing my mum might have said in the 80's to refer to the actual character of Mario.
 
If there's one term I hate a controller to be called, it's "remote". A remote is what you use on a TV, your cable/satellite, stereo system, etc. It is NOT the object used to connect to the game system to play the game and control your character or whatever.

It's also confusing because a while back, my little sister would ask if I had any "spare remotes" for my 360, so I'm thinking of something like this:

41VZKAY4QZL._SY300_.jpg
 
What is this witchcraft? Paddle? Like for rowing? I would laugh if I heard someone call it that. Board for level? Are these people born in the 40's?
 
The first time I heard one of my students at school refer to Mega Man levels as "Boards" I was pretty blown that there was other terms used. He grew up in NY and not in the south though... that's pretty interesting.

Also, Bosses = Masters.

And I think controller = Pad
 
The first time I heard one of my students at school refer to Mega Man levels as "Boards" I was pretty blown that there was other terms used. He grew up in NY and not in the south though... that's pretty interesting.

Also, Bosses = Masters.

And I think controller = Pad
Well, to be fair, they're called Robot Masters, so I guess for Mega Man, it makes sense.

Though WTF at "boards". That makes no sense. It's not a board game. You're not picking up cards or rolling dice to move.

As for pad, I'd be assuming you mean a DDR pad or that one game for the NES where you'd just be like "screw this", get on your knees, & slap the buttons with your hands.
 
Did you move in to a retirement community?

I've lived in the northeast and never hear anything referred to as a paddle other than the old atari pong paddles.
 
It's weird. Here in Québec consoles have masculine pronouns. Le Playstation, le Wii, le Super Nintendo, le Sega Genesis... and in France, they often use feminine ones. La Playstation, la Wii, though I think they say le Xbox?

Anyway, French people are weird. And wrong. :D
How can they be wrong when it's "une" console? They're right and it just illustrates Quebec's shitty grasp of the french language.

I've always used "joysticks" for computers and "joypads" for consoles (or manette in France/Quebec) I've never used the word "controller " outside of gaf

Edit: we also use "niveau" and "tableau" to mean a "level/map/stage"
 
God I get furiously mad when I hear people call controllers "paddles." They aren't paddles. You don't play ping pong with them.

I've said this in a similar thread ages ago:

This is a paddle:


Raft_paddle.png


This is a paddle:

titanium-racket-lg.jpg


Even this is a paddle:

lpaddle.gif


This is a controller:

XBox_360_black.jpg
 
The only people around me who know the term "paddle" know what type of controller it is referring to. Everybody else thinks you're talking about ping pong or umm, something else.
 
When I was a kid during the Atari and early NES days, we called controllers "paddles". We also called levels/stages "boards" I've never heard those terms used again since then though.

Western NY, by the way.
 
It doesn't really bother me, but I've never got why someone would call a level a board. It just doesn't fit unless it came from somewhere I'm not aware of.
 
What completely baseless logic. It's "un pays", but it's "la France". It's "un animal" but "une giraffe". Herp derp
Sega, Sony, Nec, Nintendo and Microsoft all use "la" to name their console. Anyway after 17 years in Quebec I'm no longer surprised by the lack of logic and knowledge displayed by its inhabitants when using the french language
 
I don't know if I've ever heard paddle used before (Southern California, btw). I did have a friend in elementary school who called lives men, which I thought was really weird at the time. Still haven't heard anyone else use the term since.

On a similar note, I see people use the term gamepad all the time on here, which I can't say I've heard used in person before. Maybe I'm wrong, but it always strikes me as what PC gamers call controllers, whereas console gamers say what I say. Maybe it's another regional thing, or maybe I just need to talk to more people.
 
Sega, Sony, Nec, Nintendo and Microsoft all use "la" to name their console.
Yes, Japanese and American companies all use "la"...

Anyway after 17 years in Quebec I'm no longer surprised by the lack of logic and knowledge displayed by its inhabitants when using the french language
lmao, logic? About gender pronouns in the French language? Are you for real?

Just to be clear, I was clearly joking when I said "they're wrong!". I was being silly in the "I'm right you're wrong nyah nyah" kind of deal.

But you seem to be actually serious in your Québec bashing (since you persist at it), and are actually arguing that there is logic when it comes to pronoun? Tell me, why is it logical that a table or a house is feminine, but a heart or a nose is masculine? Why are two different words for bike (vélo, bicyclette) each of a different "gender"? I mean you can't possibly be making this "logic" argument with a straight face.
 
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