The Joystick Port

[zektor]

That would have made for a kick-ass BBS name, although I still love my old BBS name "The Wrong Number"...

Anyway, that is not the topic of the post. I was just thinking about the joystick port tonight. That is, how it has changed. Looking at my good ol' Wico bat controller, mesmerized by it's beauty, and looking at the 9-pin connection.

This is a connection that is etched in my memory over dozens of systems and computers. Colecovision, SMS, Vic/C64, Atari consoles and computers, Amiga, Genesis...heck, this list goes on.

It was GREAT to be able to go buy a joystick you liked and use it on another system or computer. This is definitely something I think we now take for granted with each system proprietary (even with wireless now) and no interchangeability between controllers.

It was almost like (well, MORE than almost like...aside from a few) there was a standard on joystick ports for 10+ years for that era. I really miss that. Thoughts?

[Scawt]

USB is kind of the return of that, I think. Nearly every PC peripheral is USB and 360 controllers are USB (though unfortunately you can't just plug it into a PS3 and use it). I hope that eventually if it's USB it'll work, because I hate propietary shit like that.

[Steve W]

Well, once the Tramiels sued Sega for using the 9-pin joystick plug that Atari had copyrighted back in the '70s, that kind of thing died quickly. And to be honest, I think they were getting to the end of the 9-pin plug's usefulness. The Sega 6-button controller probably was the most that port could handle, considering it was designed for one directional joystick and one fire button. Still, it would have been nice to see more game hardware developers using that old joystick port and stretching it's abilities up to modern day while keeping backwards compatibility with the good ol' Atari 2600 joystick. Wouldn't it be nice to have the ability to plug in your trusty CX-40 stick to your PS2 and play those Atari/Activision anthologies?

[Greg2600]

USB is kind of the return of that, I think. Nearly every PC peripheral is USB and 360 controllers are USB (though unfortunately you can't just plug it into a PS3 and use it). I hope that eventually if it's USB it'll work, because I hate propietary shit like that.
Nintendo or Sony not being proprietary? Fat Chance. Nintendo practically invented the term.

[Ze_ro]

I miss standard controllers too... these days you're pretty much stuck with first party controllers, since most third party ones are basically identical anyways. At least with the Atari, you had a pretty wide variety of styles.

Of course, every system has to have it's own arrangement of buttons and triggers and whatnot that allowing you to plug a PS3 controller into a 360 would likely cause some troubles for the engineers... and with no benefit to Microsoft either.

USB is nice, but I always found that there was never any real standard with the controllers themselves. Some had 4 buttons, some had 10, some had two analog sticks, some had a throttle, some had a d-pad, some didn't. How is any game supposed to map all this without requiring you to do everything yourself? It's nice to see that most PC games these days have support for the 360 controller. I hope it becomes somewhat of a standard at least.

--Zero

[Bratwurst]

Well, once the Tramiels sued Sega for using the 9-pin joystick plug that Atari had copyrighted back in the '70s, that kind of thing died quickly.

That's from the D-sub connector family and was invented in 1952, Atari had NO patent over the plug.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

[Scawt]

USB is nice, but I always found that there was never any real standard with the controllers themselves. Some had 4 buttons, some had 10, some had two analog sticks, some had a throttle, some had a d-pad, some didn't. How is any game supposed to map all this without requiring you to do everything yourself? It's nice to see that most PC games these days have support for the 360 controller. I hope it becomes somewhat of a standard at least.
--Zero


The PS3 and 360 have the same number of buttons, and for the most part the same layout. There have been plenty of mods taking the guts of one and putting it into the shell of the other, and it works flawlessly.