Hi tom.
I am okay if I don't need the sholder buttons, and can hold a gamepad with
my index and middle fingers on the pad, and my index, middle and ring
fingers on the buttons to the right. This is the way I used to hold Atari
2600, and amigar joysticks (back in the days when they had just the one fire
button), arcade game controls and indeed pads with no shoulder buttons such
as those on the sega mastersystem.
For me, I just got too used to having for instance jump shoot and run
activated by three different fingers, with my index or middle finger ready
to hit other buttons for stuff like extra weapons.
Take a game like mega man 4 onwards or super metroid where you need to jump
around, slide, and dodge all while holding the fire button to have a charged
up shot ready. that would be damnably! difficult on a joypad, indeed I've
seen mega man guides which devote hole sections to how to do this while
holding buttons just with the thumb!
the hole process of just! using the thumb and ignoring all other fingers
just seems utterly insane to me!
As for specials, well firstly there joysticks rock! whether it's just
holding buttons and directions, or something more complex like the motions
in streetfighter type games where you'd need to for instance do forward,
down, diagonal down forward and punch to perform a dragon punch, ---- all in
a smooth flowing motion.
As an interesting fact though, there is! actually a beatemup made for pc
keyboards exclusively.
this was the game One must fall 2097. It was a beatemup produced for pc dos
in 1997 where you controlled giant robots with their own stats and could
fight in tournaments. The battles though were one on just like in mortal
combat or streetfighter.
A friend of mine sent me a preconfigured dosbox copy a couple of years ago,
and surprisingly it plays extremely well on pc keyboard, even moves like
activating fireballs with a half circle cross ie, right, down left punch, or
doing Jaguar's drop attack where you could hit down and punch in mid air to
grab your opponent off up the ground and flip them over your head.
I admit the game was programmed specifically! to play on keyboards, sinse
most pc owners at the time didn't have joypads, but I was amazed how well it
worked even so.
so for me, it's either a decent arcade joystick, or keyboard currently,
though hopefully I'll be able to extend that to mouse as well.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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