markdown formatting is weird bruh, sometimes it adds spaces, sometimes it removes them sometimes it just fucking yeets newlines, sometimes it adds them, what a weird “standard”
I got no beef with the three prongs like you see so many fuss about but those analog sticks were extremely fragile and would inevitably go completely limp over time and wind up 99% deadzone.
Super Mario 64 - a launch title, iirc? - murdered my control stick. Spinning that around to swing Bowser was a great game design idea, but yeah they didn’t build those controllers to withstand it for long.
People always give shit to MadCatz but they had the sturdiest 64 controllers. All the first party ones would last maybe 2 or 3 games of Mario Party or WWF Smackdown. The MadCatz we had was the GOAT for games that required spinning the stick a lot. But I hated how extra THICC they were. Made them a bitch to hold.
I’ve played an Atari Jaguar before. Those controllers were fucking awful.
The 64 controller is a close contender, although it’s hard to give it shit when it was from when 3D first started being a thing and nobody really figured shit out. But I mean, it should have been a no brainer to not design it so you’d need 3 hands to comfortably use all the inputs.
If you mean specific brands and what not; I can’t even remember all the garbage 3rd party things I’ve used throughout my life. Not good enough or terrible enough to even remember.
Back in the early 90s, here in the UK, a company called Cheetah produced licensed joysticks based on Batman, Terminator, Alien³ and The Simpsons. They looked great but they were terrible to use, especially the Alien³ model which I really liked but was incredibly uncomfortable. I never bought one, just tried then on the shops, awful things.
There were some cheap ass weird ones in North America too. I remember for Christmas we’d ask for a Joycon or something like that, and we’d get “the Joycron,” which looked nothing like a controller, had a weird shape, felt like shit and was cheap as hell. The old man would be like, arrrr we saw it at the BiWay and it was 99 cents, why do you need the one thats $60? Then he would play it, and sure enough, by February you had the real one.
It’s not exactly weird, but I loved the giant “duke” controller for the og xbox. A lot of people hated it but I think it’s one of the most comfortable controllers ever made.
I’ve always had long fingers, and The Duke was perfect. I remember getting one of the revamped controller models down the line, and it just never felt quite as good.
Still prefer X-Box style controllers on the overall, these days. Still not quite up there yet, but still better than PlayStations style, and while I think the JoyCons are absolutely adorable and clever, actually using them is just uncomfortable after awhile.
I haven’t used much controllers but I don’t like the xbox controller. It doesn’t get too comfortable to grip after a while and it doesn’t react well to sweat.
I guess hitboxes aren’t weird anymore now that they’re more mainstream. Although I did make a custom layout that is unusual (if that’s your definition of weird).
Hitboxes are something else. I understand why they are ideal, but it’s so funny to see years of ergonomic evolution compressed down to a box with a bunch of buttons on it, for more precision. Lol.
The Steel Battalion Mech controls. The size of a table, it was an appropriate recreation of the control panel for a mech, requiring you to go through all the steps from firing it up to ejecting in case of danger. You had pedals, sticks, knobs, switches galore.
Holy shit I just looked this up and this article says there are forty buttons! Also apparently if you didn’t eject in time, the game would erase your save file?!?
Both games were pretty damn brutal, but memorable, experiences. I wish someone would come up with something like it, because that was the closest I’ve felt to my childhood dream.
You don’t have to tell me to get in the robot, you have to stop me from hijacking it just for a joyride.
I have one. It’s pretty sweet. Wish Capcom made more games that supported it. It is real awkward to use, though. You gotta strap it down so it doesn’t slide around your table. Also trying to steer a match with so much articulation is a challenge. You can aim independently of the mech, whose torso is also independent from the legs. It’s a lot of joystick to keep track of.
It’s got tons of buttons, but you don’t really use most during gameplay. Mostly the triggers, pedals, and a few buttons for some silly stuff , like fire extinguisher for when you take a hit and are on fire, or the windshield wiper.
Not sure what sort of length on play you’re looking for but wingspan and terraforming Mars are both really good board games that have good-to-quite-good mobile versions.
It can be played pretty casually. A run usually takes around an hour but you don’t have to play it in one go. And on the base difficulty it’s pretty approachable. You definitely don’t have to play 500 hours to enjoy it. But you can if you want to :)
Slay The Spire is an excellent recommendation. Although a lot of people find roguelites stressful because they get stressed about losing progress. You just have to play with the right mindset:
Cell to Singularity is a great little mobile game that does have microtransactions but are easy to ignore/avoid. I played through it several times and may need to dust it off for another playthrough. Great music too.
Old school RuneScape, it has free “demo” version which you can easily put a 100+ hours in. And if you really love there is a subscription model that’s kinda expensive if you bill monthly, but no other micro transactions.
There are a lot of great suggestions here already, so I will just share Mini Review with you as a discovery tool. I like to use them because they have a lot of filters to help you find a mobile game. For example, here’s their list for free, single-player, offline games with no ads or in app purchases, sorted by highest user score. They also have an app for both Android and iOS with the same info and filtering as the site.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne