Duane Cunningham said:
As others have said, the controller was perfect for first party games and exclusives. Unfortunately, multiplatform games that weren't originally designed for the GC kind of got shoehorned in, and developers didn't always make great decisions. One session with the Mega Man collection will confirm it. As will ports like the Prince(s) of Persia, Gun and etc. Still, for games like Metroid Prime and RE4, it was perfect.
So it was sort of like the wii remote version alpha?
And developers still haven't learned.
Anyway, the gamecube game is my favorite controller of the last generation. Time for a line by line debate!
1. Analog stick - The resistance was right. The texture of the stick itself was nice. The decision to put the 8-way notches around it is completely baffling. If I'm using analog, wtf do I want to have a diagonal or horizontal defined?
The notches are exactly why the gamecube stick is the best. Yes, it's an analog controller, but that doesn't change the fact that it's important to be able to go directly straight ahead when playing 3D games -- take, for instance, if you have to cross a narrow ledge in platformer. With the dual shock or Controller S, I consistently find my thumb getting lost down there. The notches give you a consistent tactile frame of reference for where true "up" is. The dual shock almost ruins gitaroo man for me, for this reason.
2. D-pad - Is this piece of shit from a GBA? It's tiny. It's unresponsive. It's ****ing TINY. I have small, antique doll hands. I have watchmaker's hands. Yet even my toddler hands feel massive and clumsy with this d-pad. Fighting game hell. I'm suprised Nick "Blue Shadows" Rox (hey man, I actively defended you on usenet, just so you know) claims to like this controller considering you're better off throwing the controller through your tv screen than actually using it to play a fighting games. Hell, aren't even any fighting games, so I guess it doesn't matter.
As has been pointed out, no game uses it. And if you don't have a fighting stick to play fighting games, well... then you're a moran, as they say.
4. C-stick - Miyamoto wasn't happy that the c-buttons on the N64 pad were undersized and utterly worthless. He took it to another step and made them into an undersized and worthless analog stick. Did anyone make an adapter you could fit over the top of this thing? There was absolutely no reason it had to be so small or so smooth.
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Again, the C-stick works quite well if it's used well by developers. It sucks for FPS games (but then, the only controller to get this aspect right is the xbox controller, which has its own host of horrible problems) but it's perfect for third person camera controls. It's snappy and easy to make subtle adjustments with.
5. Face buttons - Buahahahaha! From the first pic of the controller I have bitched. I will never stop complaining. Worst button layout ever. Who plays games that need two kidney-shaped buttons? Who needs one oversized A button and a tiny, poorly-placed B-button? Instead of simplifying controls (How? It's the same ****ing number of face buttons ffs), it made playing popular games a chore. Thank god we didn't get many 3rd party games. The controller made a game like Splinter Cell or Prince of Persia unnecesssarily cumbersome. Not to mention it was essentially a SNES controller with a Picasso layout.
The face button layout is why the gamecube controller is brilliant. It shows a deep understanding of the way most games are designed: you've got a primary action button, a secondary button (say, jump and attack, or what have you), and then a host of tertiary commands -- so the buttons are laid out to reflect this. In the dead center you have the large, appealing A button, for primary or context-sensitive actions, and immediately to your left is the smaller, but still somewhat prominent B button. Surrounding on the right are the x and y buttons, which are used for tertiary commands. This is great because as long as the game is designed so that your most important, commonly used move is on the A button, you are only a half centimeter away from using any other commands -- and they're so distinctively placed that it's easy to remember where they are.
6. Z-button - Why? Tactile feel of a cold brick. Placed by a retard who couldn't even bother to hold the prototype with his own hands before sending it off to production, b/c there's no way anyone can call that button comfortable or functional. Thankfully, not many games use it for anything important. Eventhough the system already has a shortage of buttons.
Ironically, the Z button exists as an afterthought because of whiny morons like you who can't stand it when something traditional changes. The entire point of the gamecube controller is to simplify input (and at this, of course, it only half succeeds), but the Z button ****s it up even further. But developers wanted it because they don't know how to make games that efficiently use input channels...
And anyway, this is rendered moot, since in nearly all gamecube games the Z button is basically a select button.
