{"id":23339,"date":"2023-02-14T09:26:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T01:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/?p=23339\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T09:26:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T01:26:51","slug":"nintendo-switch-showed-us-deserve-joysticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/en\/nintendo-switch-showed-us-deserve-joysticks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nintendo Switch showed us we deserve more from joysticks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jan 31, 2023,<\/p>\n

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Every evening, my kids beg for \u201cMario,\u201d and I know what\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0means \u2014 watching their old man wrestle with a pair of Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers while hopefully saving a princess. It\u2019s not always easy timing tricky jumps in\u00a0Super Mario 64\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Super Mario Sunshine,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>especially not when the controls are fighting you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s not a lame dad excuse: we beat both games, and we\u2019re on to\u00a0Super Mario Galaxy\u00a0<\/em>now. But I can\u2019t count how many times\u00a0Joy-Con drift<\/a>\u00a0sent my mustachioed plumber plunging to his doom. When my left Joy-Con died, Mario started walking off edges all by himself. Now, my right Joy-Con is a\u00a0distracted boyfriend meme<\/a>, its erroneous joystick signals always aiming me in the wrong direction. This\u2019ll be my third set of Joy-Cons in five years, and I\u2019ve had enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At times like this, it\u2019s easy to forget: Nintendo\u2019s tiny joysticks were a minor revelation when they first came out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While\u00a0Sony may have shaped the modern video game controller<\/a>, it was Nintendo that pioneered the D-pad \/ face button layout \u2014 and\u00a0Nintendo that popularized the analog joystick<\/a>\u00a0that forms the core of most every gamepad today. In 2017, Nintendo arguably did it again with the Switch: it introduced the first handheld that was also a full-fledged TV console, complete with a fully functional\u00a0miniature<\/em>\u00a0joystick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>
The Joy-Con joystick.<\/em><\/figcaption>
\u00a0Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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The Nintendo Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS didn\u2019t have joysticks at all. The PlayStation Portable and Nintendo 3DS made do with\u00a0sliding<\/em>\u00a0thumbpads<\/a>. Even the\u00a0PlayStation Vita<\/a>, which finally introduced competent dual-analog control to handhelds, still didn\u2019t let you press its joysticks\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0to sprint or slide or zoom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Nintendo Switch changed that \u2014 and not with an off-the-shelf component. As far as I can tell, Nintendo and its manufacturing partner Hosiden\u00a0created<\/em>\u00a0the low-profile clickable joystick that ships with every Switch console.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>
All the functionality of a GameCube joystick, plus clickability, at a fraction of the height.<\/em><\/figcaption>
\u00a0Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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In January 2014, a Hosiden engineer named Mitsuhiro Asano filed for\u00a0one of what would become several patents on such a joystick<\/a>, and by October 2015, he was just one of many names on\u00a0a joint filing between Nintendo and Hosiden<\/a>\u00a0for this \u201cmulti-directional input device\u201d:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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