That Kalinske quote comes from Next Generation magazine in early 95.
Printable View
Have you seen the Western Saturn pads ?
http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/saturn.jpg
There has never been a mainstream video game console with a controller as phenomenally shitty as this one. This is the worst controller ever made for a mainstream video game system.
Try playing SF with these controllers. Now while this controller wasn't great it wasn't as bad a people try and make it out to be.
http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/psx_a.jpg
http://www.gaminggenerations.com/sto...controller.jpg
http://media.arstechnica.com/staff/f...controller.jpg
the psx controllers i could rock the shit out of anyone in a fighting game for some reason. the saturn controllers... well they sucked. the japan versions are sooo much better.
that controller is rock solid. There were far shittier controllers from other brands if you want to talk about crappy. N64, Jaguar were horrid, and the PS controller isnt that great for games like MK and SF.
SEGA 6-button pad has been the choice of fighting games for like forever.
It is why companies still make 6-button SEGA inspired controllers for 360/PS3 for fighting games.
There's nothing functionally wrong with the N64 or Jaguar pads, especially the jaguar pads. (many N64 pads seem to have had problems with the stick's springs wearing out though I've not had that really for the 11+ years of used mine have gotten -a bit loose, but no worse than the GC, PSX, Xbox, etc tend to get) The Jag pad is fine other than the lack of needed butts for some games. (the pro controller addressed that -and the keypad left tons more potential for porting certain PC titles that otherwise were limited)
Hmm, the N64 pad should be pretty good, at least better than the SNES by a significant margin: the 6 face buttons (A+B+C) aren't as good as the Genesis/satuturn, but at least they're there and quite usable (especially a and b) vs using shoulder buttons on the SNES (and the N64's triggers are far more usable too).
The D-pad may be similar to the SNES, but is also superior due to the more raised surface, more concave molding around it, and better feel in general.
If the N64 had actually gotten some good fighting game ports to exploit that, I doubt people would be claiming some of these things. (it's almost certainly the best stock Nintendo controller ever made for fighting games) The N64 actually should have been well suited to 2-D fighters as well with the large block of unified RAM and use of ROM for fast updates (let alone the expansion pak) and even using the standard fast 3D microcode it had quite decent 2D performance. (the "turbo 3D" cose sounds liek it would be much more well suited for 2D given it supposedly speeds up rendering by about 6x while omitting certain 3D effects -presumably Z-buffering, filtering, perspective correction, mipmapping, reflection, and such- making it more liek a faster PSX GPU, but the description is vague; of course a proper 2D opimized RSP code would be preferable in general)
I've always found the Jaguar pad really nice to hold, ten billion useless buttons aside I think it's actually a pretty nice design.
One of the few console pads that doesn't favor people with tiny effeminate hands.
You are talking about the original Saturn controller as released in Japan:
http://www.axess.com/twilight/consol...l/saturn_a.jpg
That controller is rock solid indeed.
Best controllers ever IMHO both are fantastic:
http://www.axess.com/twilight/consol...l/saturn_a.jpg
http://www.axess.com/twilight/consol...l/genesisb.jpg
I think SEGA would have still found ways to shoot themselves in the foot, regardless when the Saturn was released. They were the 16-bit era's Atari. They had this great brand recognition and just always seemed to make stupid decisions. I stand by the belief that they turned off a lot of buyers with the failed SegaCD and 32X platforms. Both were expensive and both saw Sega release a mostly forgettable library that they failed to support after a year. Then here comes the Saturn, again highly priced. Clearly their stupidity resulted in pissing off 3rd party developers like EA and big retailers with that early launch date. That effectively killed the system right there. Still, launch titles didn't explain how the Playstation outsold the Saturn in a few days what SEGA sold in several months. No, people were excited about Sony's entry and they were tired/fed up with buying from SEGA.
They shouldn't have bought into the 3d hype so much. People didn't stop liking 2d games just because the machines could do 3d. When that first run of 3d stuff came out I thought they looked like crap. I stuck with 16bit stuff until the N64 came out, and I didn't get a Playstation until FF7, Castlevania SOTN, and Metal Gear Solid were released. It wasn't until late in the Saturns' life that I got started getting interested in the Saturn as people were getting better with the hardware, and some better stuff from japan was getting ported. The price was a big turn-off as well. There was no way I was going to spend $400 dollars on a system that didn't offer anything more than the other two. Then Sega went and canceled the system, and that was the end of that. Of course, Sega completely ignoring their popular franchises (Sonic, Phatasy Star, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc.) didn't help things. It's mind boggling to me why know one thought to release a port of Golden Axe: Death Adders Revenge with the system. Talk about out of touch with your core user.
You're right, I actually prefer the Genesis 6 button (original) to the Saturn pad. I can use the Saturn pad in emulation and it just doesn't feel right for Genesis games to me. Of course the Saturn pad's shoulder buttons are the first time I ever liked shoulder buttons on a game pad, and they do add significantly to Saturn games in particular.
I like the genny 6-button better too, though I'm not sure if they could have managed triggers that worked as well with that shape.
I still prefer the 3 button for 3 button games though. (both are great... unless you get into some of the crappy revisions)
No, he's clearly referring to the US model 1 Saturn controller... unless you were being sardonic. :p