- Picture a game pad.
You know, kind of wide, two handles, two thumb sticks,
some face buttons, a D-pad, and some shoulder buttons too.
That's basically every controller ever at this point, right?
But what if I told you
that not only did some foresee
this future over 20 years ago,
we hit a lot of wacky potholes
on the road to modern perfection.
So come along and learn about
some of gaming's most interesting controllers.
Some look normal.
Others, not so much.
It's normal to stick around through
the sponsor spots like these though, for iFixit.
From iPhones, to Nintendo Switches,
iFixit has your repair needs covered
with their lineup of fix kits.
Find out how iFixit can help you repair
your devices at the end of this video.
(upbeat electronic music)
There's no shortage of fodder for a video like this.
So for today, we'll be ignoring
intentionally weird controllers
like chainsaws, katanas, and hip hop logos.
And instead we're gonna be sticking
with some more technically
and historically interesting specimens,
starting with the most
historically interesting of the bunch.
(funky electronic music)
This absolute unit is called the XE-1 AP,
developed by Dempa Micomsoft in 1989
for the Sega Mega Drive and MSX compatible home computers.
They're still around, by the way.
One of their most famous products
was actually the Framemeister,
which has sadly been discontinued.
The XE-1 AP notably served as the
inspiration for Sega's 3D control pad for Saturn,
which in turn, was made into the Dreamcast controller,
which inspired the original Xbox controller.
Don't believe me?
Check out these concept sketches
from Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley.
That's right, you can trace the modern Xbox controller
all the way back to this thing.
But, it's substantially bigger than even the Duke.
So, how the heck do you even hold this thing?
What works best for me
is index and middle fingers on the shoulder buttons,
thumbs on the sticks,
and ring and pinky fingers holding the grips.
It's not the most ergonomic setup in the world,
but considering this had never been done before,
it's not bad.
That's right.
Not only was this the first use of an analog thumb stick
as we know them today on a controller,
it was the first use of shoulder buttons and grips, too.
Predating the Super Nintendo by a year,
the N64 by six years, and the DualShock by eight years.
Now, true 3D games weren't a thing
on the MSX or Mega Drive in 1989,
but Sega's 3D-Like arcade games used analog controls,
and home consoles didn't have analog controls.
So Dempa made their own.
The way the stick functions is shockingly simple.
On the inside, the stem slips into two split half rings
that overlap each other
and connect the two potentiometers representing each axis.
All that moving the joystick actually does
is turn those potentiometers.
The right stick only has one axis
that serves as a throttle in most cases.
And if you wanna use it in a different orientation,
or even inverted, you can do that by simply
(right stick clicking) twisting it.
Neat!
(right stick clicking)
The controller itself has six face buttons,
four switches, and four shoulder buttons.
If you're keeping track at home,
Sega pads at the time had four buttons,
and later seven buttons was the best you got.
The two face buttons on the right
share the A and B buttons
with the shoulder buttons on the same side,
and the buttons on the left shoulder handle C and D.
Now, D isn't a normal button on the Sega Genesis controller.
And while it shows up in the options menu,
it doesn't actually do anything that I can tell.
The rest, I think, are for the MSX.
A handful of Mega Drive games did support it,
but because it didn't get released outside of Japan,
and the Mega Drive was well behind
both Nintendo and NEC there,
it didn't gain widespread support.
(whooshing)
Unlike orders from lttstore.com.
We got your back.
While Dempa stuck to Japan,
Advanced Gravis Computer Technology,
founded right here in British Columbia,
was far more prolific in the west,
specifically in the PC peripheral space
with the Gravis Gamepad being
the quintessential PC controller of its time.
So much so, that it was available for the Phillips CD-I,
for better or worse.
But the SNES-like game pad,
while historically significant and interesting
with its flippable controls,
isn't as interesting as the PlayStation-like Gamepad Pro.
While it was available in USB,
the white game port version was special
in what it did with a far more limited interface.
I mean, look at it.
10 buttons.
That alone is weird.
Because the old PC game port can only support
up to four axes and four buttons at best.
Half that at worst.
How does it do it?
Using what they called GrIP, or G-R-I-P.
Which, as French blogger PulkoMandy discovered
is a 5 bit I squared C style interface
using the first and second buttons
for clock and data transfer.
This means that not only does it only need
up to 11 of the 15 pins on the port,
it can theoretically support up to 11 buttons.
15, if you include the D-pad.
And it can support multiple game pads at once.
Yeah, this was a big deal back in the day.
Because of the way game ports worked,
two controllers via a Y splitter
would be limited to two buttons each.
But with GrIP, the second controller
uses the buttons that would normally be used
for the second controller
for an additional serial connection.
Gravis even made a four controller hub using this technique,
with each controller having eight buttons.
Get subscribed by the way,
because we're going to look at a keyboard
that has this kind of plugin approach
to peripherals for it that you're not gonna wanna miss.
If you're wondering why I care
about all this game port nonsense,
it's because the USB just didn't catch on
for game controllers in the early days.
Because, well, you didn't have all that many ports.
I mean, maybe you had two for your whole PC.
Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro,
probably the best joystick of its time,
only supported the game port.
And it also had a special mechanism created by Creative Labs
to use the MIDI capabilities of the game port
for bidirectional communication,
rather than the traditional joystick protocol.
It's that bidirectional communication
that made force feedback possible,
something Microsoft was pushing pretty hard at the time.
Unlike Nintendo's contemporary rumble pack,
which had a vibrating motor,
like we're all familiar with in modern controllers,
the Force Feedback Pro had directionality
and texture to its impulses,
actually shaking the stick in response to in-game action.
While the game port was seriously old
by the time Microsoft finally retired it with Windows Vista,
the effort that went into extending
and improving it with features like this
isn't talked about too often nowadays.
But they were vital in cultivating
PC gaming around this time,
and led to big features we'd see come back later.
Speaking of which, a friend of mine from junior high
actually owned a Freestyle Pro,
a boomerang-shaped monstrosity that had a terrible D-pad,
but an extremely interesting analog control, motion.
Wikipedia describes it as similar to the SIXAXIS
controls found on PS3 and later Sony controllers.
And I'd say that's about accurate.
It was difficult to get used to back in the day.
But it gave the controller a lot more utility
than it'd have without it.
And likely planted some seeds
in future Sony engineers' minds.
It straddled the line between USB and Gameport,
and it was one of the many controllers of its time
that hedged its bets by including
a Gameport to USB adapter in the box.
Microsoft had a lot of other wacky ideas
in the pre-Xbox years, but few others truly caught on.
Let's come back to the Sega days for our final controller.
You ever get fatigued when playing games?
You know, cramps, blisters, numb thumb?
Well, the Turbo Touch 360 from Triax
is here to save the day.
This was available on the NES, Genesis, and Super NES,
and did away with Gunpei Yokoi's
historic invention entirely,
replacing it with this
thing.
"No need to push," they say.
This technology breakthrough in video game control
uses a capacitive touch sensor instead.
Otherwise, it's pretty much a standard Genesis controller
with nuclear yellow 90s styling and turbo switches.
Clearly Triax was confident in this technology though,
with their "higher scores or your money back" guarantee
as seen on TV style marketing.
So, hey, maybe it's better than I let on.
(whooshing)
So compared to a regular controller,
this gives you way finer control.
Like I can adjust the throttle any way I want,
I can go pretty much wherever
I want immediately on the screen.
Whereas before, with a controller,
doing that kind of stuff, like holding right here,
would actually be kind of difficult.
The thumb stick is really tall actually,
so that makes it a little bit awkward.
Aside from all the other things that make it awkward.
But, can't argue with the results, it works.
Like that's pretty good first three stages, I think.
But yeah, holding it for extended periods of time like this,
or at least holding it up like this,
probably not the best idea.
It's not ergonomically sound
and it is pretty, pretty heavy.
But yeah, I kind of feel like I'm just
moving a mouse and clicking on stuff.
This is ridiculously easy compared
to using a game pad with a regular D-pad.
All right, let's switch to the other controller then.
Let's start with a Turbo Touch.
See how this compares to the XE-1 AP.
Okay.
Oh.
Oh no.
Uh.
(light chuckle)
I, yeah, this doesn't feel
like I have any control at all, actually.
I touch it and it's (uncertain groaning).
I mean the controller works.
I think my thumb is just too fat.
It's like triggering multiple directions.
But hey, at least I didn't die for the first three stages.
Significantly worse score.
That's a thing.
Yeah, like I basically never get an opportunity
to lock on and fire anything,
because I'm not actually able to point at anything.
Yeah, I think there is something
where I'm gonna probably have to open this up
and tweak those potentiometers.
Ugh.
And if you rest your thumb on it, it's like,
okay, it kind of works.
But like now I'm constantly actuating something, so,
I can't sweep my thumb in the kind of directions
that they say you can.
Like, circular motions are easier now.
That doesn't feel like it's a thing.
I don't know.
(whooshing)
It was not better than I let on.
But hey, that's not to say
that the technology is bad, necessarily.
We're seeing its descendants make its way into controllers,
like the DualSense, and Steam's upcoming Steam Deck.
So the idea was sound, it just,
it's not good for this purpose.
If you open it up, you can see the metal capacitive plates
that you're actually interacting with under the D-pad,
as well as potentiometers you can tweak
to adjust their sensitivity if need be.
It's a pretty complicated PCB
compared to most controllers of the time,
but unfortunately, that didn't save it from bombing.
It's conceivable you could get faster input
if you got used to it,
but at $15 more than a first party controller,
it was a steep ask to give up tactile feedback
in the name of faster actuation.
Come to think of it, gaming keyboards have been
doing that for a while now, too.
I mean, maybe they were just too ahead of their time.
There's far more controllers like these
than we have time to talk about in one video.
Like this Jet Fighter controller.
And not all weird controllers are from the 90s.
I just happen to own a few of them.
Let us know what you think are the weirdest controllers,
and maybe I can convince Linus
to do another video like this one.
But I don't need to convince him
to let me do a sponsor segue of iFixit.
Thanks to iFixit for sponsoring today's video.
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Check out our link to iFixit down in the description
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Thanks for watching guys.
This was a different kind of video,
so I don't really have a related video for you to look at.
You know what, all of these
should work in Linux with adapters.
So go check out my "How to Install Linux" video
because it's getting way more relevant
as the Steam Deck gets closer to release.