What Arcade Controls Are Your Least Favorite?

Not really a fault of the controls but trying to play Gun.Smoke with the 3 button setup is agony on the hands after a short period. I even built a custom CP with the 3 buttons nearly touching each other they are so close, and it's still uncomfortable to spread 3 fingers that much to be able to hit all the buttons without lifting my hand up.

I'm just so used to console controllers and PC/mouse that it's really uncomfortable playing anything with more than 2 buttons, to be honest. I mean I guess there's something to it if professional fighting game players use them, but it's odd to me that people still prefer the large spread apart buttons.
 
Marble Man joystick.

This is the absolute worst. What the heck was Atari thinking when they put joysticks on a game where you roll a marble ?!? There is supposed to be a 3-player version that uses trackballs though.

Centipede. I have to play cross-handed.

This is blasphemy. Centipede and Millipede are perfect just the way they are.
 
I know some people probably won't agree but I always felt that Defender and Stargate could have used an 8-way joystick combining the functions of the up/down joystick, reverse and thrust buttons. Just an 8-way joystick, fire and smart bomb plus inviso on Stargate. It would've been much easier for many people that way.
 
I know some people probably won't agree but I always felt that Defender and Stargate could have used an 8-way joystick combining the functions of the up/down joystick, reverse and thrust buttons. Just an 8-way joystick, fire and smart bomb plus inviso on Stargate. It would've been much easier for many people that way.



It almost seems like maybe you could engineer this one to a certain degree? Even crazier replace the fire controls with a tron like joystick. Maybe two top buttons one warp and the other smart bomb
 
I know some people probably won't agree but I always felt that Defender and Stargate could have used an 8-way joystick combining the functions of the up/down joystick, reverse and thrust buttons. Just an 8-way joystick, fire and smart bomb plus inviso on Stargate. It would've been much easier for many people that way.

Sounds like the 19 in 1 pcb... ;)
 
Bitd, I actually adjusted well to playing with buttons on the left, cross-handed of course. :p

I never liked the rotating sticks in games like Time Soldiers, because there was always something wrong with them. I still have a vivid memory of trying to play through on one side of the screen, because I could only shoot at a 45 degree angle. :)
 
I know some people probably won't agree but I always felt that Defender and Stargate could have used an 8-way joystick combining the functions of the up/down joystick, reverse and thrust buttons. Just an 8-way joystick, fire and smart bomb plus inviso on Stargate. It would've been much easier for many people that way.
Sounds like the 19 in 1 pcb... ;)

And every console port of Defender/Stargate that I know of. And it wouldn't have needed to be an 8-way joystick; a 4-way would have worked fine. When I play Defender in MAME with a USB gamepad I have it set up like that.
 
Balls, specifically in Marble Madness. Fuck that game.

Street Fighter 1 with the big plungers. Might be fun for a coked up bro but completely idiotic otherwise.
 
Some of what makes games interesting and unique is that their controls are different. That's why I like the Defender and Stargate controls! That said, I suck at both and they're soooo hard.

I'm surprised that I'm the first to vote for 720. Yes, it's the right joystick for the job (see above paragraph), but I could never get the hang of it.

And my biggest one are the games that use the giant (2"?) lighted plastic buttons. I know there's a 4p wrestling game with them and Blades of Steel has it for the fight or punch button or whatever.
 
The lack of a jump button on Arabian and Kangaroo. (To Chris:D)

Someone mentioned Front Line on here... the combination of a spinner and a fire button is ingenious to me. It does takes a bit to get used to...
 
Some of what makes games interesting and unique is that their controls are different. That's why I like the Defender and Stargate controls! That said, I suck at both and they're soooo hard.

The controls on those games are what make the games.

It needs to be setup that way to get that fine control over your ship, the games generally blow on console ports or setup any other way.
 
The controls on those games are what make the games.

It needs to be setup that way to get that fine control over your ship, the games generally blow on console ports or setup any other way.


This.

Defender with a 4 or 8-way stick has been discussed. There are subtleties to the control scheme that would be lost if you tried mapping them to a stick.

Yes, the game would be playable, and you can argue as to whether this would have been better for the game from a business perspective, but as far as gameplay goes, you'd be sacrificing part of what IMO makes the game what it is.

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=356301
 
Robotron with microswitches. Yuck. click, click, click,click, click.

And Robotron with poorly spaced leafs. Aaargh!! Makes me want to bend the sticks clean off.
 
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