There is a stick to the controller. There are also things of analog sticks. The stick was adopted for home gaming machines from Nintendo 64. It was called a 3D stick because the game was able to adopt 3D space with polygons and 3D. Prior to that, a direction key classified by the Famician cross button was used.

The HORI of the game peripherals Hori published the page “Recruiting Retro Game Controller (provisional) opinions” on January 15, 2022. And this retro game controller (provisional) has had a part that can not be seen recently. Loop lever, paddle, truck ball. Do you know what to do this? This is a part with a stick like a stick that you have talked now. It was mounted on the age of the NES and the Cross button, or more than before, mainly in the game chassis, which was mainly active in the arcade.

Retro Game Controller (provisional) Recruitment of opinion (HORI official site)

Some people may be nostalgic, and some people may have never heard that the games have liked. I would like to talk about such retro game consoles and the game used.

■ Loop lever separately with one lever and shooting direction

Loop lever developed by SNK famous for the “ The King of Fighters ” series and “ 伝 Legend ” series.

Among them, it is close to the first stick. It can be operated in eight directions like a practically stick, but the lever itself turns like a bit.

It is installed in the arcade game “ T. A, N · K ” released in 1985, and the game “T · A · N · K” is a shooting game that manipulates the tank. Of course there is no 3D at that time, so it is the screen of the dots seen from directly above.

By defeating the lever, while manipulating the tank in eight directions, you can change the direction of the battery by turning the stick like a dial. It is devised to be able to manipulate the direction of traveling and shooting separately. It seems that there is a sense of reality in the feeling of tank.

Loop lever is also also adopted for “ angry “, which is the SNK shooter game.

# ■ Can you move only in either vertical or horizontal? paddle

Paddle is a device that only has the loop lever dial. For example, if it is rotated right, the player character moves to the left if left rotation. Hey, do you think that it is not only left and right? Yes, the game was so popular that the game was not likely to be left and right or up and down, or two directions.

Do you not think that the paddle is a strange name? If you turn the knob, it is a “dial”. Paddle is a tool to shoot a ship, a duck foot, or a word that is a spare of a hala, but it is similar, and table tennis racket is also called a paddle.

And in the old days, the game is the game early period, and in the 1970s America, there was a game called “ Pon “. It is said to be a game that hit for the first time in the world. Pon is a pong pong and is a game that imitates table tennis. Move the plate-like plate displayed on the left and right of the screen to move up and down, and play a ball with a ball to play like ping pong. A game that lives a ball that is represented by Pon, it is called a paddle controller with a device that moves the racket.

In Japan, there are people who think that Taito’s “ alkanoid ” used this controller? Move your own machine to the left and right, it’s a game that bounces the falling bullets and breaks it on the block. You can only move to the left and right.

# ■ Trackball that allows freely moving

The last truck ball. By moving the embedded ball, it is a device that operates player characters and aiming. By rolling the ball, it is attractive that you can operate the direction freely. However, the trackball may be more than the arcade game, and there may be a lot of people who know as an alternative to mice.

“ Marble Madness ” manufactured by Atari, who made Pon, was a game that moved the trackball, and manipulating the ball in the screen. Similarly, at the “ missile command ” manufactured by Atari, we will operate the missile to intercept the missiles. It is good to be compatible with the trackball by moving the ball and aim freely. However, there may be many people who do not know the name of these games in the first place.

In the interesting place, this trackball was adopted in the work that Sega’s Sonic became the first arcade, “ Segasonic The Hedgehog “. I think that there are many people who imagine a horizontal scroll in the dot era, but in this work, with the so-called “quarter view” of the founding type, it was able to run Sonic in a free direction using the trackball.

So I introduced the old arcade controller. HORI recruits comments by email in the development of peripheral devices that reproduces this arcade controller. If you are interested, please see that.