History of gamepads: Part 1
I repaired my older controller from the Xbox 360 (nothing special just began to stupid the sticks over time) and noticed what kind of thing: for 17 years this piece of microcircuits and plastic is quite suitable for almost all games. 17 years old, 3 console generations and if you look at the gamepads of the latest game systems, we will see that they are not particularly changed. 2 stic, cross on the left, 4 actions on the right, 4 shifts (well, or 2 shifts and two trigger), "Start", "Selek". Moving – on the left, actions – on the right. It doesn’t matter Xbox, PlayStation, Switch or PlayDate with a handle from a barrel organ. All of them follow this unspoken "scheme".
Microsoft Xbox Series X Wirless Controller
PlayDate from Panic
And this is clearly not something new, only recently appeared. In childhood, the gamepads from Dendy and Sega were the same. Crap! Yes, even in through the Chinese Brick-Game, these principles are preserved, although something tells me that the Chinese just copied everything under the pure at Gameboy ..
The gamepad is almost Dendy
Sega Mega Drive 2 gamepad
Probably the only ones who violate the established orders of things is PC Gamers. But let’s cleanly. Neither the keyboard came to us from the end of the 19th century, nor a slightly younger manipulator like the “mouse” from the beginning of the 70s are not initially imprisoned for games. There are not enough buttons stupidly on the mouse to scatter all the necessary functionality on them. So it is not very important not very convenient to place it somewhere in the WASD area not very comfortable keyboard.
"Mouse" of the Xerox Alto computer (1973)
The keyboard of the printed machine Remington No. 2 (1978)
I am generally silent about left -handed people ..
But we are not here for mockery of PC-Boyars gathered. They are sensitive people, they will be offended inadvertently ..
Briefly speaking! I was interested in: why is the modern gamepad just like that and how it has become?
Part 1: Kruilki
No matter how paradoxical it will sound, but first we need to find the beginning.
On the one hand, you can go from the first video game, but, believe me, it is better not to even look into these wilds. First you get to tennis for two 58 years, bypassing Spacewar! 61, and then from the most thick thicket you are waved by a paper machine of Turing from 51. And I have the feeling that this is not the beginning.
But we know for sure when the https://casino-instant.co.uk/bonus/ first video game system appeared.
And no, not this year. There are no more TVs as such. The first more or less commercial models will begin to be sold in Germany only in 12 years. But everything in the same Germany in the town of Pirmazens was born a boy Rudolf. He had a quite ordinary childhood of a Jewish child in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century: up to the 34th year, everything seems to be normal, but now in the 35th he was forced to leave school. The family is still sitting on the priest for some time, and then in the 38th pretends the star of David to the swastika and leads to relatives in New York. Exactly a couple of months before the crystal night. Imagine how surprised they were when this news came to them.
Upon arrival in the New World, Rudolph changed his name to Ralph and went to work for the production factory … cases for manicure sets. Well, what did you want: immigration is the matter! Did not work – did not eat. On the cover of some magazine, he saw that good grandmas can be shutdown on the repair of electronics, and it rushed.
For two years, the guy mastered the electronics, already in the 40th year finished courses for repairmen of radio -stupid and angle from the factory to free trifle. What, in other way, succeeded. For three years, he opened 3 electronics repair services in different areas of New York. Things were going well. But the yard is still 43 years old. In the United States, the call has been working for three years, and Ralph just hit 21, and yes, the age of age in the United States is the same as in Russia -18 years, but the first 21 -year -old guys are the first to go on mobilization. Apparently so that you have to follow the illegal use of alcohol at the front.
He spent the first year in the states where he received a specialty in intelligence. As a result, Ber was trained to interrogate prisoners of war. Europeans, apparently, considered that the Jew during interrogations of purebred Aryans was already some kind of overkill and put Bura to lead the Likbez for soldiers. The Americans already prepared in their homeland had to be familiarized with what is happening at the European Military Theater.Well, there, who runs in what form, from which they make pi-piu, how the other tinsel is merged with the area. In particular, Ber was engaged in rifle weapons. First in England in preparation for the Day "D", and then in France. When the time came to return “home”, with it there was a collection of various weapons weighing 18 tons, from which 3 expositions were formed in different parts of the United States.
Upon arrival, Ralph again “took up the soldering iron”, entered the American Television Institute of Technology, in which in 1946, he received a bachelor’s steppe in the class “Television Engineering” (Television Engineering).
Ber himself claimed that he was the first in the United States to receive a similar specialty, but I have no idea how to check it, and whether it was needed … After release, Ralph worked out experience, working as an engineer for various television companies until he got a job in 1955 to work on Sanders Associates. The company at that time lived on military orders and did not have much need for an expensive representative office in New York, so Ralph, together with other employees, rejected the state of Vermont in Manchester.
Life went on as usual. Wife, children, house, personal scientific laboratory in the basement, everything is like normal engineers. But then one evening of 1966, Ber recalls how back in 1951, working on one of the TV manufacturers, he proposed to integrate in the game TV or something to stand out from a number of identical wooden boxes. And in the yard is already the second half of the sixties. TVs have become much more common, and no one has adopted the idea of Bura.
The next day, Ralph describes his idea on paper, at the same time as it, in general terms, can be realized. So that in the company, his “document” mainly occupied by military orders would be accepted at least a little seriously, he refused the words “toy” and “Play”, associated mainly with children’s toys, and in return used “Game” and “Gaming”, which were used in the army slang.
Robert Tremblay became interested in Bera’s idea and next year they make the first prototype. TV Game Unit #1 (TVG #1). He worked on the basis of the generator of colored stripes and points (such things were previously used to rebuild the image on kinescopa TVs) and could display a point on the TV screen, which could be controlled in real time. Yes, this is not a lot, but the idea of Bura was confirmed in the gland.
Seeing this miracle aggregate, two engineers from Sanders joined the hedgehog. Both William (William) Harrison (Harrison) and Rusch (rusch) (in any case, I hope his surname is read this way, although he may be oti). Four of them make a new prototype to demonstrate the company’s higher management.
TV Game Unit #2 no longer required a separate generator to display the image on the TV screen, but, most importantly, it was games! Nothing super-complicated: simple competitive games to the reaction, speed and accuracy. Judging by some photographs of very jackal quality, for this thing there was a light gun. A multi -ton collection of small arms, coupled with the incredibly simplicity of Lightgan design, tell me that it was the idea of Bura. For another of the games, a hilt at the bottom of the case, similar to the pump handle, was needed, so more often this prototype is remembered under the name PUmp Unit. It was possible to impress this agrigatine, and the leadership gave the “green light” to develop the salary in Sanders.
And there seems to be a concept, and it was possible to sketch the games, but right now “wow!"Did not come out. Something was clearly not enough. But one of the William, the one that Harrison suggested, in addition to the points controlled by the players, to add one more, so that the players could not directly control her, but could interact. It was it. After a certain number of man-hours and several prototypes, in 1968 the team made TV Game Unit #8-still a prototype, but an almost finished device. He was even wrapped in a beautiful vinyl film under a tree. Actually for this, TVG#8 is better known as The Brown Box. They still finished iron on it, experimented a little with games and controllers, but it was already a almost finished product. It remained only to add a little industrial design.
Not without difficulty Sanders managed to sell a license for a box of Magnovox, a fairly large TV manufacturer in the United States. And already in 1972, she appeared on the US shelves! Odyssey!
Of course, in the age of VR and iron, the speed of which exceeds the values of a dozen teraflops, built on the simplest logical elements, the 50-year-old old man can no longer surprise. But the fact that from these capacities they squeezed Ben with their team … worthy of respect! Let me remind you that they had a black screen and 3 points, it was optionally possible to display several strips on the screen, but that’s all. Odyssey did not know how. Even reproduce at least some sounds. Nevertheless, 28 games came to him (18 went immediately with the console, and another 10 were sold separately). The absence of graphics as such was decided using semi-transparent overlays (they held on the screen due to static stress, which accumulated on the kinescope as it works). For more complex than any tennis, games used cards and additional fields, although for the same tennis it would also not be superfluous to hold a handle with paper at hand. The console did not know how to keep an account either.
Gameplay Table Tennise
But yes, not about games today. What is there with input devices?
Well, in addition to quite brutal in the appearance of a light pussy … Sorry, guns, there is, in fact, the controller itself. In fact, this is a white-deredled brick made of plastic. So there is no need to talk about any ergonomics in his direction. It works and is already good. There are three rotating handles on the brick, almost like a radio receiver. The right is responsible for the position of the point on the vertical. Large left – beyond the horizontal, and small – English. Maybe this word has some other meaning that is hidden to me, but actually with its help it was possible to slightly change the trajectory of the third point. A kind of twist, and then she did not work in all games. Well, the discharge button on the top. Everything, but if you remember for which games the controller was intended, the solution is quite working and functional.
Unfortunately, the world’s first game console had no commercial success. It was planned to sell 140,000 copies before the end of the year, but only 69,000 were realized and finished up to 350,000 by 1975, when Odyssey was discontinued from production. Ber himself believed that this was caused by unjustifiably high price and poor distribution. And by and large, he is right. The console cost very solid 99.95 (768 of today’s green pieces of paper), and not particularly understandable advertising, coupled with the sale of consoles exclusively through official dealers, made people think that Odyssey can only be connected to televisions from Magnavox. And, perhaps, the entire video game industry would have not even been born into oblivion, if not for one very cunning entrepreneur-entrepreneur.
So far in 1943, Ralph Bere tried on a new Khaki color suit, in the town of Kliarfield, Utah, Nollan Bushnell was born in the family of a cement businessman. Already in childhood, the boy had a craving for invention. Once he almost burned the garage in the process of testing his home -made missile fuel.
In 1961 he entered the University of Uta University, where he studied without specialization at first, but in the end he went to an electrical engineer and transferred to the University of Utah (yes pancake, completely inextricable names!) After receiving the degree of bachelor, the young specialist went to the magistracy, but already Stanford University, and not for an engineer, but for a businessman.
Somewhere between couples and a diploma, he got a job for the part-time job in the Arcadian Hall, which was in the local entertainment park. Yes. Arcade machines are insanely old garbage. In general, no wonder. People came up with the idea to take money for games with the celebrating onlookers for a very long time, and automated machines are only a logical further evolution. Arcad has an unrealistic extensive and interesting story, but alas, today we are interested in slightly different video game devices. So on the topic Arkad I will go here, not really deepening into its bowels. OK? That’s well!
Working in the Arcade Hall, Bushnell met Ted Dabney (Ted Dabney). Like Nolan, he was an engineer and loved games. The guys clearly had something to talk. And then one day, somewhere between 1969 and 70m year, the comrades came to the conclusion that the market of arcade cabinets stagnates. At this time, a hot novelty was an automatic machine with the Speedway game from Chicago Coin. It was necessary to go along the endless highway and score points, overtaking cars falling on the way. But on the already older computer Dec PDP-1, which stood in the Alma Mater Bushnela, you could play in the miraculous-good-Spacewar! The duel of two spaceships in the orbit of the stars that tried to absorb everything, passing by, with her attraction. It even sounds more interesting than driving to the left. And there was still limited weapons with fuel and the ability to teleport to the random part of the screen, and with each next use the chance of a spontaneous undermining of your aircraft increased. And all this is Stephen Russell (Stephen Russell) wrote back in 1962. Of course, the game needed a computer for 120,000 (1,208,000) evergreen. But the hell has been this computer for 10 years, and to launch the game itself, it was clearly not needed by all the power of iron, not to mention the fact that some aspects of the game could be simplified and simplified.
After waiting a little while Bushnel becomes a master, two comrades rivet the Spacewar clone! And together with the manufacturer of Nutting Associates, Sysygy Engenering, the world’s first video game machine Space was released! OK. Without an exclamation mark. Unfortunately, the machine did not find popularity. Sold only about 1,300-1,500 cabinets for three years. And there are rumors that the latter were not sold in a very complete form, rather, as a pile of spare parts than the unit ready for work. Bushnell accused Nating of all failures and as a result was enough with them, in the process losing the name of his company, but not faith in electronic entertainment. Moreover, only recently, in 1971, he was at the presentation of one entertaining stray from Magnavox.
Already in 1972, Nolan opens the second company – Atari, and produces an arcade boom in the PONG arcade machine gun on the market. At its core, it was the stolen concept of Odyssey, naturally “modified by a file”, firstly, out of 28 games it was decided to leave only Table Tennis. Secondly, remove one of the axes of the movement, leaving the players the opportunity to move only parallel to each other. This made it possible to simplify the controls to one feed button and two handles, one on the player. Thirdly, they decided to add a little "physicists" to the game. Now the angle of reflection of the “ball” “racket” was not constant and ranged by the part of the white rectangle interacted by a white square. Well, fourthly, electronic filling added the opportunity to make sounds, simple squeaks, but this is better than a tight stream of silence diluted with a high-frequency rumble of a kinescope.
The very first and, at that time, the only machine was put as a test in the ANDY CAPP’s Tavern bar. After a week and a half, the machine broke down. No one was very durable. The machine itself was assembled literally on the knee, and they put it first in order to check the reliability of the entire structure. The reason for the breakdown was a crowded and jammed monetary receiver. Of course, the guys hoped that the matter would burn out, but no one certainly expected this. The game turned out to be simple enough for a couple of tipsy friends to play a party-two.
Only 3 years later in 1975. Atari releases its PONG in the form of a television console. Odyssey failure has not yet died out, so they did everything in order of experiment. The first consoles did not even go out under the atari brand. TELE-GAMES was used as a possible scapegoat. At that time, no one knew for sure whether the home version of the arcade machine would be needed to ordinary Americans, for not small 80 (443) dollars.
And the console shot and so that Atari had to be in a hurry to build an additional factory. It seems to me here, Pong recognition as an arcade machine played. Everyone clearly understood what they would receive.
Pong (which is arcade machine, that the home console) were incredibly simply arranged. So the market quickly flooded clones. They added additional games of the game (hockey, handball, squash), complexity levels, modes for one player, like the crown of all this bacchanalia, even a chip from General Instrument containing all the necessary logic for the assembly of the pong-clone. Such consoles did everything. Even in indestructible were their variations on the topic of electronic tennis.
