Community Forums => I'M BACK => Topic started by: King of Twitch on November 11, 2008, 12:39:14 PM
Title: Pressing is the New Waggle
Post by: King of Twitch on November 11, 2008, 12:39:14 PM
October 29, 1988 at 23:19 PDT by Art Cade, Contributing Editor
I've long been a critic of games that involve pressing a button. It's a forced, cynical use of a hardware feature that should either be used properly or not at all. Buttons are for changing the channel on the television, calling someone on the telephone, or operating a Sony Walkman; not for games. Lazy developers have turned this potentially revolutionary aspect of the NES controller into a glorified button press, much like the plague of joystick "waggle" in Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Starting with Double Dragon last year, the blatant misuse of buttons in gaming has crossed over into console territory. This is a new development sin, though. Popular sports games with button-press gameplay are now asking players to press their finger or thumb onto a usually round, red button in order to produce a corresponding action on screen or some equivalent. Don't get me wrong, pressing is a legitimate element of video gaming, but it certainly doesn't belong in every game. Moreover, the mechanic just doesn't work very well. I'm extremely disappointed to hear that this glaring design flaw hasn't been addressed in Track & Field, and it seems to have been directly copied for Track & Field II.
When playing Track & Field with friends, I usually spend a lot of time pressing; most other people seem to consider it some kind of duty that must be fulfilled until your next turn at the controller. But I like pressing, and I'm happy to take care of that role. Sadly, the buttons portion of Track & Field seems to get no love from the developers, either. Putting aside my many qualms with 110m hurdles, it's completely ridiculous that there is no good way to activate hurdle power on the controller. Pressing sounds like a terrible idea in many games, and sometimes it doesn't even work. Other times, bright lights in the room (a.k.a. a Rainbow Brite) can throw off your concentration. Hitting the controller in your hand, as you would for the Javelin throw, doesn't seem to work very well either. Perhaps the most effective way to activate hurdle power is – you guessed it – pressing a button. Regardless of your method, it sounds horrible when the game plays the 8-bit music over your TV's speakers to everyone else.
If the point of these sports games is to make you feel like you're really competing, why can't the developers find some way to activate the long jump score boost without totally ruining that immersion? All it would take is one small joystick. These companies are willing to ship $70 Zappers and $100 ROB sets, but they can't be bothered to include anything other than a cheap, plain $10 controller with two red buttons and a dpad. Heck, at least give us the option to tilt a joystick on the standard game controller! Nintendo makes a NES Advantage controller for NES, featuring its own joystick and turbo buttons, but these can't be used to activate hurdle power because the game isn't programmed for that functionality.
Am I the only one bothered by the complete disregard for these games' tactile components?
Update: Since I posted this Usenet entry, some readers have noted in the Talkback thread that Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! does allow you to joystick tilt on the Advantage. Now we'll see if Nintendo will use the extra three months of development on the NES version of Super Mario Bros. 2 to fix this problem.
Title: Re: Pressing is the New Waggle
Post by: Jonnyboy117 on November 13, 2008, 04:40:19 PM
Nicely done. I take it you're a Screamer?
Title: Re: Pressing is the New Waggle
Post by: Mario on November 13, 2008, 06:58:37 PM
Depends how big it is
Title: Re: Pressing is the New Waggle
Post by: EasyCure on November 13, 2008, 07:50:15 PM
wow.... perfect execution... just wow..
Title: Re: Pressing is the New Waggle
Post by: nickmitch on November 13, 2008, 09:30:10 PM
