It appears to be calendar season. Not, however, calendula season, nor colander season. But as I was making my snazzy and sexy 2022 fembot calendar yesterday, I also started making one I could actually hang on my wall. You know, one that isn’t pornographic.
And it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet made a calendar which begins on Saturday. Well, blimey, crikey, zounds, gadzooks and all that. So rather than just transfer a bunch of the images I’ve already used of classic video game consoles and 8-bit and 16-bit computers, I’ve made something a little different.
This year’s calendar commemorates all those memorable, innovative, and sometimes awkward game console controllers from yesteryear. The twelve controllers showcased are:
- Atari 2600 joystick
- Intellivision controller
- Nintendo Famicom controller
- Nintendo Zapper light gun
- Sega Genesis 6-button controller
- Super Nintendo controller
- Nintendo 64 controller (for people with three hands)
- Sony PlayStation DualShock controller
- Sega Dreamcast controller and VMU
- Microsoft Xbox “Duke” controller
- Nintendo Wii
waggle wandWiimote and nunchuck - Nintendo Wii U game pad
It’s interesting to see how some of these basically became standards, while others were interesting diversions, missteps, or outright mistakes. And that’s just a small sampling of a dozen.
So here is that calendar, fit to print and hang on your wall when you want to look at old video game console controllers!
It makes me think of all those old game consoles of the late 1970s and early 1980s with numeric keypads built into them – the ones that were somehow going to make video games better. I call them “phone controllers”.
It’s a good thing we moved away from those, although most modern controllers actually have more inputs, believe it or not.
And while I’m talking about video game console controllers, I almost found the perfect controller to play all those old emulated games with.
Oh sorry, that’s the wrong picture.
Yeah, that one. You’ll notice the nice decent size and the six face buttons on it, making it great for Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn games. It would also be good for Nintendo 64 games, But it lacks a right thumbstick, so it would only really be good for those systems, and I already have a solution for all those.
Why can’t someone just take a standard dual thumbstick style controller and add two freaking buttons to it? Maybe some day. Maybe even before I make the next calendar!