Hardware mis-steps

[Ady]

Sometimes, it's the little things that make the biggest differences. In terms of video gaming hardware, those little things can annoy and irritate users immensely.

What I'm looking for then is examples of gaming hardware that -despite being good on the whole- is somewhat let down by one or two little faults. I'll start with some examples:

GBA - The dull screen : An obvious one this and -to be perfectly honest- something that didn't really bother me at all (the original GB was no different), but I could appreciate why other users may have had a problem with it all the same.

Atari 520ST - Joystick port : I never had one of those, but they were quite popular amongst my friends at school when I was 15 (I preferred the Amiga). Now, I actually liked the machine's aesthetics, but the earlier 520STs had joystick ports underneath the unit, which meant you had to lift the machine fiddle around with its underside. To this day, I'm genuinely staggered this got through QA.

Commodore 64C - SID chip alterations : Of course real men (and women) had the breadbin, but the redesigned 64C was fairly ubiquitous. As well as changing the case, some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to mess with the celebrated SID chip and completely remove one of its best features. Games with digitised music always sounded quieter on my friend's 64Cs, and this was because the SID chip had been tweaked in order to disable its ability to play samples. Nice one, Commodore. This would be like Nintendo re-releasing the SNES with Mode7 funtionality removed.

PlayStation - analogue sticks : Yuk. Bulbous, imprecise and slippery. Sony got everything else right with this pad (imo), but the analogue sticks are terrible. Here's hoping they actually do something about it with the PS3...

That's it for now. Please discuss your hardware blunders here.

[dataDave]

PSP - Dust behind screen, dead pixel generosity, extremely fragile plastic coating, dodgy 'Square' button.

N64 Analogue - There is no better analogue stick when these things are fresh - 3 months down the line and the whole thing turns into a different story.

Dreamcast 'L/R' triggers - The fragile little retainer clips would always snap on me, no matter how gentile, giving me a jammed trigger. Dead good.

[Kotatsu Neko]

NDS - Lovely machine but too damn bulky all over. Fat, heavy, chunky, and generally overweight. Trimmed down to be super thin and slightly wider than an SP, it would be a perfect handheld.

GC - The machine is cute, the pad is a work of genius, except for one little thing... the d-pad is far too small, and too hard to reach. It's useless.

[TheShend]

Sega Saturn - I wish they'd provided a proper on board memory solution than those silly batteries. How many saves did I lose to you? Too many.

GC - What's that handle at the back about? Providing purchase to swing at PS2 owners?!

[babs]

Xbox - The original pad. Whilst I for one welcome the pad for larger pads, it wasn't the size which bothered me, but the awful, awful buttons. Oval and domed up so much that after any length of time playing with it you had indents on your thumb and hurt like buggery (probably ?_?).

Master System - The Master System dpad was horrible in my eyes.

SNES - The American design, I'll say no more.

[Kubrick]

Gamecube - The Z button, it's almost useless. Perhaps Nintendo felt the controller didn't have enough buttons and threw this on at the last minute.

[Reef]

Atari ST - ok, which moron decided to put the joystick/mouse ports underneath the machine - I don't think a single ST exists with no 2 port working. I was forever taking out the mouse to plug player 2 joystick in and vice versa...

Ah - I didn't read the first post properly...

in which case I will say

Nintendo DS - couldn't they make the thumb strap just a little bit longer?!?

[Ady]

Xbox - The original pad. Whilst I for one welcome the pad for larger pads, it wasn't the size which bothered me, but the awful, awful buttons. Oval and domed up so much that after any length of time playing with it you had indents on your thumb and hurt like buggery (probably ?_?).

Yes I remember that. The size didn't help eitehr (for me, anyway).

To the above however, I'd add the inclusion of the near useless black and white buttons. Almost as pointless as the GC's Z-button.

Atari ST - ok, which moron decided to put the joystick/mouse ports underneath the machine - I don't think a single ST exists with no 2 port working. I was forever taking out the mouse to plug player 2 joystick in and vice versa...

Ahem.

Read the first post, mate.

[Reef]

yep sorry Ady

[Oh! My Car!]

I don't think the GC Z-button is too bad, you can just have your middle fingers on the shoulders :/ The d-pad is a killer on the fingers though

[anephric]

WonderSwan: why make all the buttons from the broken milk teeth of destroyed children after a playground armageddon? Why can't I have proper d-pads?

As well.

Amiga 600: why chop off the numeric pad? Why bugger up backwards compatibility? Why, full stop, in general?

[Richard.John]

The Atari Jaguar joypad. Nuff said.

[anephric]

I have a friend who insists the Jag joypad is a startlingly original design and historically underappreciated.

Seriously.

[Richard.John]

The Commodore Amiga CD32. Again, what was the point.

[Lebowski]

Atari Jaguar Pad Nearley as many buttons as a Steel Battalion controller nearley as big too, ok well maybe not as big

PSP The mpeg 4 option is needlessley tricky for the average joe, It would of been better if it suported anytype of movie (mpeg, wmv, avi) just for ease of use.

put a movie on the memstick and away you go would of made much more sense, whats wrong with that ?.