Dpad Awareness

[foxhound1022]

I was bred on D-Pads. I'll take a good one over any analog or arcade stick any day.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I love dpads. My favorite one is on the Saturn, followed by the Genesis one and PlayStation pads.

[MrNash]

Unless I'm doing something that needs finesse, and the game allows me, I always for the D-Pad. Not a huge fan of analogue sticks. Fighters and shmups are good for this. A lot of RPGs should be good for this, but movement nowadays is forced to an analogue stick.

[neilencio]

The D-pad still gets a lot of use from me. I have difficulties doing double taps (for rushing/running, jumping backwards, etc.) with the analog stick. And there are a lot of games nowadays that use the D-pad for non-redundant functions (e.g. taunting and blocking in wrestling games, or in marvel ultimate alliance, shifting between four characters with just 1 button). The d-pad is here to stay (in fact, without the nunchuk, the wii mote doesn't have an analog stick. just a dpad.)

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I think the PS D-Pad is good for everything but fighters - shmups and platformers are really fun. It's also comfortable. D-Pad really is superior for some games. Others, like flight games, are better with analog. But a nice SNES pad and a day of Mario World is a good day indeed

[foxhound1022]

I remember playing Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury 2 on SNES until I got blisters. I now have a thumb callus impervious to any abuse.

[nightrnr]

I remember playing Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury 2 on SNES until I got blisters. I now have a thumb callus impervious to any abuse.

Can you mod my thumbs with those ?

Calusses, the one accessory you can't buy.

[neilencio]

we still need to watch out for carpal tunnel syndrome.

[Key-Glyph]

I've always been kinda bad at analog sticks (two notable exceptions: N64 and Dreamcast), and with almost any game will ultimately settle on the D-Pad. I always try the analog stick first in the hopes that with practice I'll get better (and to limit the self-fulfilling prophecy of being bad at it by avoiding it), but it's rare. I do all Resident Evils and Soul Caliburs with the D-Pad.

I've actually been thinking about this thread topic lately, because I just acquired a GameCube and Gameboy Player. Even though using the D-Pad on the GameCube controller is awkward as anything -- reaching all the way over like that -- I still played better with it than the stick.

I wonder if a lot of my problem is that I rely on a lot of dead time in my controls. So much of my use of the D-Pad involves releasing it and letting the game's physics take over, or tapping in little nudges here and there. With a stick I feel like I always have to be pushing it in some direction or I'm doing it wrong. Even if I'm bringing it back to center for dead time I still have my finger on it and am holding it there, in a way. And then of course I'll drift without realizing it.

[MrPopo]

Oh wow. I thought I was the only one who preferred the D-pad over analog sticks, guess not. The only analog sticks I've ever really liked are the ones on the Dreamcast and GameCube controllers. I will sometimes resort to using the PlayStation analog sticks though, only because that D-pad is so horrible. What were they thinking?!

What's bad about the Playstation D-Pad? It's always felt comfortable and responsive to me. And it feels better made than the cheap pieces of rubber they call D-Pads on XBox 360 or Dreamcast.

It's definitely better than the two d-pads you named, but that doesn't say much. The thing about the PS d-pad is that it's quite uncomfortable to quickly move between the different directions.