Page 11 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #40 FREE Edition

brought us the latest and greatest controllers as of this writing. Nintendo’s Joy-Con are spiritual successors to the Wiimote. Each pair can operate independently, a convenient feature for when you and a group of friends want to play multiplayer games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Tech, such as
triggers heighten immersion by introducing tension when pulling back on bowstrings, squeezing
the triggers of sniper rifles, and controlling cars as they slalom over rough terrain.
For over 50 years, video game developers have been evolving not just the builds of traditional
controllers, but the idea of what controllers make possible. We’ve seen these peripherals grow from boxes to remotes used in tandem with VR gear. It’s impossible to say for certain what the next 50 years
of controller evolution will bring, but if the past five decades can be considered a foundation, expect innovation and refinement in equal measure.
LATE TO THE THIRD PARTY
Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and other first-parties produced the most ubiquitous controllers for their consoles, but just because a controller didn’t come packaged in a console box (or receive prominent placement in this article) doesn’t mean it wasn’t evolutionary in its own right.
•
make gaming more accessible to players unable to use traditional
Xbox Adaptive Controller: A peripheral engineered to
controllers.
• Instruments: Plastic guitars and drum sets are gathering dust, but for much of the late 2000s and early 2010s, Guitar Hero,
Rock Band, and their peripherals took over living rooms.
• 8bitdo Pro 2: Modeled after the DualShock, this controller works perfectly with several consoles and, most notably, PC games.
• Xbox Elite: Pricey but worth it, the Elite can be customized with different d-pads and analog sticks and programmable buttons.
• Fight Stick: These arcade-style controllers keep the coin-op experience alive by giving fighting game players the feedback and input methods they need for pro-level play.
the accelerometer, gyroscope, and infrared depth tracking sensor, makes gaming on the Switch a much more refined and immersive experience than the Wii, whose motion tracking could be spotty even when using the Wii Motion Plus enhancement.
Microsoft refined the Xbox One controller model for the Xbox Series X, offering a more comfortable
fit. It also sends information from the controller to your console
more often, which translates to tighter responsiveness. The PS5’s Dualsense stands in a class of its own. Haptic feedback and adaptive
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