An introduction

I’m a gamer. I love playing video games and have been playing them since I was 3 years old, I have had cerebral palsy since I was born, but I was formally diagnosed with it at 18 months old. These two things often don’t dovetail very often, but they do very occasionally, usually during times when executing certain button inputs or commands is difficult. For instance, in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, at the end of one of the campaigns, your character is dueling with the final boss, and in an attempt to overpower each other and gain the upper hand, they both spin their weapons around and make contact, drawing a stalemate. In order to overpower the boss, you must spin the left analog stick a certain way until the animation ends. With my left hand being in the shape that it is thanks to the spasticity inherent with cerebral palsy, I used my right thumb instead. No problem, it’s a simple fix! But there are some situations where I simply just cannot perform certain inputs or even use certain control methods altogether. It’s a bit of a problem but again, these are things that developers plan for, well mostly. This is a post I have been wanting to do for a while and I just couldn’t get the format right. But I have settled upon a pretty good one. We’ll be going over my personal experience using the controllers of each of the three main console manufacturers and we’re going to be rating them by how easy they are for me personally to use. This is not a definitive answer in terms of accessibility, as everyone is different in terms of motor function and every other disability under the sun. But this is a very personal thing for me. I have seen the options for accessibility in games expand in certain ways, and be restricted in others. So let’s start off with a device that is near and dear to my heart, the original PlayStation! 

My first memories of playing video games is playing Crash Bandicoot 3 when I was about 3 years old, on the PS One, Sony’s revision of the original PlayStation. Smaller and more compact, with a whiter shell and included DualShock controller that later became standard in every subsequent PlayStation released. My experience playing with this console comes from mostly using the directional buttons, the harder, more rigid buttons that give the player less freedom of movement, but doesn’t hinder the player in any way, you can still get through games just fine, even though I couldn’t beat any of them. I think this is the best controller for me in terms of “can I comfortably play a game with minimal difficulty getting to all the buttons”. For one, the DualShock one and two changed very minorly. I think the only thing that was changed between controller revisions were the pressure sensitive triggers. In fact not only were the triggers pressure sensitive, all the buttons were too. But this controller was just enough for what I wanted to accomplish. It was perfect for action based games and precise movements, perfect for the types of games that I was into, which were mainly platformers and racing games, with the odd sports game sprinkled in. Sony, props to you, for you made a design that was classic and has stood the test of time!

And what do you do with a design that’s classic? Well, as the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! The Dualshock 2 featured minute differences compared to the original dualshock, and it’s the Playstation controller I grew up with. Many hours were spent playing PS2 and PS1 games. The colors may have changed; my original black slim model had a defective laser and was replaced with a silver model, which was sold about 9 years ago as we moved house. But eventually I bought a new black slim PS2 and my collection of games has been steadily growing ever since. This is the controller I grew up with, and I learned that analog stick control is vastly superior to controlling with the D Pad during this time. And I’ve been playing that way ever since!

The next new console I owned was the Wii, but we’ll give Nintendo their due here in a bit! I next owned the Xbox 360. That controller takes cues from the Super Nintendo controller. Four colored face buttons A, B, X, Y, all comfortably spaced and easy to reach, four triggers which feel satisfying to click, and two analog sticks, the right one next to the directional pad and the left one on a diagonal from the D Pad. In later revisions of the controller, the material they used for the sticks was refined into a tire tread like substance, as opposed to the smooth, rounded sticks that caused thumb pain after excessive use. My gaming experience continues to not be hindered by inaccessible control methods, as I have since moved to the PS4, which utilizes my favorite controller thus far, the DualShock 4. It has basically the same design as previous Sony controllers, but the miniscule amount of improvements make it the definitive controller of this current generation of consoles. The buttons feel satisfying as ever to press, and the triggers were given an overhaul, feeling more responsive and snappy. There’s also an extra button! The touchpad isn’t really used for much in regular gameplay, with most games using it as a second pause button. But, developers at Sony have done one of my favorite things in recent years. Starting with 2016’s Uncharted 4, and continuing with 2018’s Spider Man, they have given players certain accessibility options. With Uncharted 4’s prominent use of quick-time events, where players often have to repeatedly and rapidly press a button to perform an action, such as dodging or punching, the option is there for players to hold the button instead of tapping it. I used this option in Spider Man, as there were certain things that I couldn’t do rapidly, like alternating tapping the triggers to shoot webs. Also present is the option to skip the science puzzles, and since I’m not good at those, it was a relief that the option was there. It’s things like those that make me feel good about games, because it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it! And I feel like accessibility, especially now, is starting to become a noted issue for certain developers. I will forever be loyal to Playstation, but I applaud Microsoft for introducing the Adaptive Controller. At first glance, it looks like one of those arcade fight sticks, but upon closer inspection, one notices a lack of buttons, there’s just a directional pad, the start and select buttons, and the Xbox menu button. The real magic comes in the various ports and jacks which correspond to specific buttons, in which you can plug in various adaptive buttons and switches to whatever button port you choose, and you can use a regular controller in co-operative “Copilot” mode. I think this video from Microsoft explains it better than I ever could.

It was a nice step in the right direction in terms of accessibility in video games, and one that was much needed, especially after the prolonged misstep known as the Kinect. Sony has also made great strides in accessibility in recent years, with the new back button attachment released in January of 2020. It plugs into the USB port on the bottom of the controller, and it acts as a sort of extra set of whatever 2 buttons you can assign to it. Again, I feel like it’s better to leave it to the manufacturers to explain the appeal of this contraption.

Personally, I don’t know if I would ever use this but I can see its benefit. Some people can’t reach all the buttons on a standard controller and I can see how this would make it easier for them, you just assign certain buttons to it and off you go. But why is it only 2 buttons? Maybe it’s a preview for what the Playstation 5 could do, in which case, I might be on board. But, there’s one more company that we need to look at. Friends, it’s time to take a look at the big N, Nintendo!

Nintendo entered the console market in 1985 here in the US (‘83 in Japan) and they’ve become the most successful handheld and console manufacturer in the history of video games. Part of that is due to innovation; it is popularly believed that they invented the now standard directional pad design, and they set the standard for how games were to be made and operated for generations. The NES controller is really good, if a little small and less ergonomic than it’s later counterparts. The design is pretty standard, and was imitated for years: Directional pad, 2 face buttons. Solid, classic design, built for the relative simplicity of the games that would be massive sellers on the system. The Super Nintendo gave rise to more complex games, and that demanded a better controller, and they did indeed deliver. This controller added an eight directional D-Pad, two additional face buttons, and for the first time, two triggers, L and R. The Nintendo 64 is where Nintendo started to go crazy. As 3D gaming became possible, Nintendo revamped the controller design. This behemoth of a controller is rather difficult to describe, but it added a sort of analogue stick, used for movement in a 3D space. Also included were 2 Face buttons, yellow directional buttons (known as C Buttons), two triggers, L and R and strangely, a Z trigger on the back of the unit. This design was met with mixed reception, largely because of confusion over how you were supposed to hold the thing. If that seems confusing, look at this:

Do we have 3 hands?

The three “wings” have always mystified me. Why is the controller spaced out like that? Third party gamepads do a good enough job of compacting the controller enough so it’s more conventional, but why wasn’t the official Nintendo controller designed this way? This would become a common theme for Nintendo later on, but for the Gamecube, they refined the 64’s design so the controller looks like an actual controller that would feel pretty good to use. They did a cool thing with the face buttons. The A button is larger because it is the one used by the player most often, and the B button is smaller than the X and Y buttons. Also included are the standard L and R triggers, a Z button above the R trigger, and the C stick, replacing the individual C buttons of the N64. I think there’s a reason there are still adapters being made for the thing and why it’s preferred by Super Smash tournament players. It’s compact and efficient and easy to use. With the Wii, a new controller with a completely different design entered the fray. The Wii remote stood out because it was unlike every other game controller seen up to that point. A D-Pad sat at the top of the controller, with an A button below that. Below those were plus and minus buttons, each flanked by a home menu button. Below those buttons were the controller speaker and 1 and 2 buttons, which were used when the controller was held on its side. The real star of the show though, was the Wii remote’s infrared sensor, which allowed it to communicate with the Wii’s sensor bar on the TV which allowed for pointing functionality. It was something that took me a while to figure out, because my hands weren’t steady enough I guess. This problem was also prevalent in certain motion controlled minigames in Mario Party 8, as the inputs were too complex for me to correctly execute. But I would argue that the biggest problem for me personally was Mario Kart Wii’s motion controls, which sold approximately a kajillion Wii Wheels, official or otherwise. I couldn’t get the incredibly precise motion needed to make certain turns, because my hands weren’t steady enough. Thanks to Nintendo’s inclusion of other alternatives for control, I could play with a nunchuck plugged into the connector at the bottom of the controller, and I got pretty darn good at the game, playing the online mode for hours on weekends. But that’s another story for another time. The port also allowed for more conventional controllers, such as the Classic Controller, which was the closest Nintendo got to an actual successor to the Gamecube controller. It had more in common with the rival gamepads from Microsoft and Sony, which I thought was beneficial. It had all the same features that those controllers had: dual analogue sticks, dual triggers, four face buttons and a directional pad. It was an easy controller to pick up and use and I don’t know why it wasn’t utilized more often as the primary method of control, instead of the Wii remote and nunchuck. You’ll notice that that becomes a bit of a theme later on. The Wii U was backwards compatible with all Wii hardware, so there’s no need to recap how well they translate. The brief description that I’ll give for the Wii U Gamepad is this. It feels good, not my favorite controller I’ve used but it’s not the worst thing ever like some people make it out to be. I actually thought it was pretty cool how the screen was integrated in some games. Like in Wind Waker HD, you could swap out items with the stylus without having to pause the game, or view maps of the world, or in dungeons. But, sadly, it didn’t sell very well. Some blame the lack of third party support, others blame confusion on what the Wii U actually was (was it a console or an add on to the existing Wii? That was actually a source of confusion for some when it was revealed and that doomed it, I think). But we’ve come to why I wanted to write this in the first place. Let’s talk about the Switch!

The Switch was released to much fanfare on March 3rd 2017, and buoyed by a strong “killer app” (that being the excellent Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild), enjoyed strong sales out of the gate, and those sales have remained strong in the intervening three years. I didn’t actually get my hands on one right away, as they were constantly selling out, much like the Wii in 2006 and 2007. But some of my friends in high school did, and I would play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with them very occasionally. One thing caught my attention was how small the default Joy Cons were, and how awkward they felt to use. The analog sticks just felt off to me, and the buttons felt small as well. Thanks to the Joy Con grip attachment, the Joy Cons can slide into a more traditional controller configuration, but that still doesn’t mitigate the problems that I have with the controller. And other people have similar problems with these controllers, like the Joy Con Drift thing and things like that, but there was a moment that inspired me to write this piece involving someone very close to me that was really eye opening.

My good buddy Sawyer got a Switch for her 22nd birthday. She Snapchats me shortly after with a problem. She’s paralyzed, but still has some hand function, which makes it possible for her to play video games, which is something she loves doing, even though she’s not very good at them. Anyways, she says, “how am I supposed to use these (referring to the default Joy Cons), with my bad hands?” I offer her the same solution that I used, “invest $80 in the Pro Controller”, a more conventional gamepad more akin to a 360 controller. But, this is something that Nintendo has been doing for well over a decade that I feel like needs to change. They’re sacrificing accessibility in favor of innovation and being different. They’re leaving it up to the individuals instead of stepping up to fix it themselves. And spending $80 on a piece of hardware that should’ve been bundled in with the console isn’t a very good option. If more people can access your console and play your games, then you’ll sell more units! I think if Nintendo goes back to a more conventional controller for their next console, it still would do fairly well, and create an environment where we could all play!

And that’s what I aim to do with this blog. If you’re reading this, chances are, you like video games and want to discuss them. It doesn’t matter whether you’re loyal to Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo or PC, my aim is to have something for everyone! If I cover a game, and I get at least one person to go, “hmm, this sounds interesting, maybe I’ll play that!” I’ll know that I’ve done something significant. This is something that I have wanted to do and have been working on for about a year and I hope you like it! I feel like I wasn’t motivated enough to work on my old blog, because it wasn’t focused enough and I was super lazy about it. But now, this is focused and it’s something that I want to do, and I’ve already done some work on it, and everything is way more well thought out. We’ll have a good time on this blog for sure! If you would like to reach out to me on Twitter it’s down at the bottom and I’ll see you all very soon! Thanks for reading!