Reply to comment

Bill Loguidice
Bill Loguidice's picture
Online
Joined: 12/31/1969
Paddles
Matt Barton wrote:

Yeah, so many games came from that Pong model.

I remember some other games that used paddles to good effect. Seems like Beach Head would let you use a paddle at least on certain levels...Damn, come to think of it, I can't think of many titles that used paddles.

It depends on the platform. Certainly the Apple II supported dual paddles for left/right, up/down, since its default controls were analog anyway. The Atari 2600 initially came with a set of paddles as well. The C-64 had several paddle titles besides the usual suspects, including Questron and Arkanoid. Interestingly, the paddles from Commodore were a higher resolution/accuracy than the standard Atari models, though both could be used interchangeably (nevertheless, some games were designed for the higher tracking accuracy). The knob on top of the Bally Astrocade controllers is a combination joystick and paddle. Etc.

Paddles are among my favorite all time controllers, but it's true that once you get past roughly the mid-80's, their use dropped considerably, with the most notable title being Arkanoid and its sequels still making use of it. Prior to that, though, it was a fairly common control scheme and quite ubiquitous if you consider the myriad of arcade machines and home systems that utilized it in the 1970's.



Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.

***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <blockquote> <i> <b> <img> <div> <span> <a> <p> <span> <div> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <map> <area> <hr> <br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong> <font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <param> <strike> <caption> <iframe>
  • You may post PHP code. You should include <?php ?> tags.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Images can be added to this post.
  • You may quote other posts using [quote] tags.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.