Revolution

[thepanda]

Just wanted to start a thread on the Nintendo Revolution and its controller to see what other Soulriders think of it. Wasn't sure where to put the thread so its here until a mod decides to move it. *hint*

For me, after all the naysaying of the fanboys and the silence of the big N I was quite curious about what the hell kind of controller they could possibly have that required so much secrecy. Now that I've seen it I can understand why they held off.

Its an unusual controller, to put it nicely. I honestly was surprised when I saw it. Not just 'oh, so that's what it looks like' surprised. It was more '... What. The??"

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not the only one stunned. I have to admit, it threw me. Good thing Nintendo held off until now. If this had been anounced along side either of the other systems it would have been doomed. Complete and utterly without hope would it be. Now that the hype of the other systems is fading, and the 360 has already show a huge discrepancy between the footage shown at e3 and the current in game footage for a certain football game, I think people will have the right frame of mind to try to really look at what we have here.

The controller intrests me. I'm from a family of gamers who tend to move alot while playing a game. I sat too close to an uncle playing FZero back in the day and got a busted lip once. While my arms don't flail nearly that much, there is something apealing about being able to use my arm movements to move my character. Its different. I have good memories of the fishing rods, dance pads, scopes, guns, and other add ons to various games over the years. I don't find anything wrong with not sitting down with a traditional game pad.

That being said, I wonder at the claims I hear about ease of 3rd party developement. I have zero experience in this area so I ask the forum at large, does this thing appear to be as easy or appealing to program for as some would have us believe?

[Zenthor]

The controller needs a rumble feature.  That'll get the "Girl Gamers" in.

But in all seriousness, the controller... looks like crap.  Sorry, but the whole remote interface just looks hard to use when playing... any game worth player, really.  Okay, maybe not RPGs, but Nintendo's not exactly the RPG king here.

Yeah, the controller's probably better than the PS3's for comfort (though it looks a whole lot worse for ease-of-use).  Like that's hard.  But it also manages to look worse than the original X-Box controllers.

...Which really says alot about the new controller designs.

...man, I wish they weren't making them all wireless.  Or at least I wish they had controller ports, and had backwards compatability.  I like the current controllers, the new ones just look painful.

[baka]

I've gotta say, the only controller I like the look of in the next gen is the Xbox. The PS3 controller is a banana, and the Revolution controller is... a stick. I can see some interesting uses for the Revolution controller, but to be fair, I don't see most "normal" games fitting it. Platformers especially.

[Ranmilia]

*coughs at Zenny*  Rumble packs were already confirmed to be in all the controllers.  Girl gamer demographic indeed.  But anyhow..  
The controller looks pretty much designed for Metroid Prime 3, and other FPS, RTS, stuff like that... at first glance.  But then... the one thing I'm noticing that I haven't seen any other comments on is the number of buttons, or lack thereof.  This thing's just A, B, and D-pad by itself, and you can't really play much with that - even assuming movement is all handled by hand-waving (and I have trouble assuming that for sustained movement), Metroid Prime still needed two D-pads, four main buttons and two shoulder buttons to get everything done.  It's obviously going to rely HEAVILY on the promised plug-in attachment controllers for pretty much every game besides Duck Hunt 2.  That's not necessarily so bad, though - there are some shots out of the left-hand analog stick thing being used, which makes the contraption look like a more normal controller split into two halves.

[Dracos]

A)We did discuss that yesterday night in SR =P

Yeah, the buttons are an issue.

B)It's supposed to be completely backwards compatible with the GC controllers as I hear.

If so, that has them covered there.  The GC has enough buttons for all prior systems to map right.  It will cover the traditional game designs while still allowing new stuff.

That said, the right move would be to include both controller types with each console.  To push that notion of "We've got the traditional and cutting edge covered"

Dracos

[Dracos]

The controller needs a rumble feature.  That'll get the "Girl Gamers" in.

But in all seriousness, the controller... looks like crap.  Sorry, but the whole remote interface just looks hard to use when playing... any game worth player, really.  Okay, maybe not RPGs, but Nintendo's not exactly the RPG king here.

Yeah, the controller's probably better than the PS3's for comfort (though it looks a whole lot worse for ease-of-use).  Like that's hard.  But it also manages to look worse than the original X-Box controllers.

...Which really says alot about the new controller designs.

...man, I wish they weren't making them all wireless.  Or at least I wish they had controller ports, and had backwards compatability.  I like the current controllers, the new ones just look painful.

Come on, some of us are in class! =P

Dracos

[Kwokinator]

The controller needs a rumble feature.  That'll get the "Girl Gamers" in.

Come on, some of us are in class! =P

Dracos

What?  Too pleased about the thought of a rumble pack built-in to a stick-like controller? ;p

[Dracos]

More like restraining laughter.

Dracos

[Brian]

Oh, it's easy to laugh at, but the reviews on using the controller are surprisingly positive, so far.  Myself, I think it looks hokey, but still want to actually (you know) try the thing out before prejudging it.

The video game industry has quite enough prejudgement based entirely on how something looks these days without throwing more into the mix.  Concerns such as gameplay and functionality tend to take a back seat to dynamic lighting, etc....  Which shouldn't be the case; nor should we dismiss innovation when it's clearly backward compatible anyway.  I think we should give the big N a chance (I'm sure there'll be demo kiosks in stores etc. to allow try-before-buy) until we see evidence that suggests otherwise.

[Zenthor]

Mm.  Upon watching a few videos of it in action, I hate the controller less.

Also, I'm betting that most of those extra A/B buttons will be replaced with X/Y/Z things, or something similar.  And from the looks of it, the attachable Analog stick has Z1 and Z2 buttons.

It still looks hard to use, but maybe it won't be as horrible as my initial reaction thought it would be.

Not that I'll be using it much if it's backwards compatable with GCN controllers.

[Ragnar]

REVOLUTION!

Quick! Zenthor, storm the Bastille!
Panda, you distribute arms, and I'll sing Warsavankya.

...What?
Oh. Right.

Well, the reveiws I've seen are pretty positive. Of course, I'll probably be aiming for a Playstation 2 first, as I have doubts that the PS3 will be back-compatable.