Comment by aquova
1 day ago
I've seen a few posters ask already, so I figured I'd answer what the PS2 analog button's function was.
The button switches between two modes of the analog joysticks, either to behave with their normal functionality, or to simply be a digital input (so just round all movement to either up/down/left/right). For PS2 games, you typically wouldn't want to do this. Instead, the functionality exists because the PS2 was backwards compatible with PS1 titles. The original PS1 controller didn't have analog sticks at all, just the D-Pad for navigation. After a few years (and the success of Nintendo's N64 analog controller) Sony released a revised version of the controller that included two joysticks, which their controllers still mimic to this day. However, those PS1 games released prior to the analog controller wouldn't always behave correctly if you tried to use an analog input scheme, so Sony added a mode to allow the Joysticks to function the same as the D-Pad, in case players preferred it.
Other fun fact, the analog controller was not the same as their more famous Dualshock controller. There was a short-lived PS1 Dual Analog controller which just added the joysticks. It only lasted a few months before Sony replaced it with one that supported rumble functionality (also after being inspired by the N64), this was the Dualshock.
I had a PS2 slim years ago and was annoyed that it wouldn’t let me use a “dual analog” controller I had kicking around to play PS2 games, eg for second player. Seemed like an unnecessarily hostile move to force an upgrade there when all the functionality other than rumble was clearly present.
But of course it’s the same now on PS5. I still have my PS4 pads and use them to round out 4p couch coop for broforce, overcooked, moving out, etc, but actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads.
The DualShock/DualAnalog were not quite the same as the DualShock 2, the face buttons on the DualShock 2 were advertised as being pressure sensitive. Some games were capable of using this.
Funnily enough, this caused issues with PS2 games ported to Xbox subsequently. Metal Gear Solid 2 made heavy use of the pressure sensitive buttons for weapon aiming vs shooting. I recall the Xbox didn't have pressure sensitive buttons, so had to do something different to achieve this (I'd need someone else to fill in the gaps here, I never owned an Xbox!)
3 replies →
The PS3 had those too, but they were dropped for the PS4 and PS5. I did read that it caused a few headaches for the classics ported forward.
Speaking of oddball controller features, I was a bit surprised the PS5 retained the little trackpad, given how little use it seemed to get on the PS4— even in obvious situations like Assassins Creed where you're moving an on-screen cursor around a map, but only with the thumbstick.
> actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads
So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.
Meanwhile I'm rocking an original release day Xbox One controller on a Series X.
That said while I can understand them dropping X360 witeless due to protocol changes I'm still bitter that the X360 wired accessories were simply denied on the Xone, notably the whole Rock Band stuff as well as steering wheels.
>>So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.
It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers functionality that is impossible to emulate on the PS4 controller. For example in Ratchet and Clank short pull on the trigger fires the gun, there is artifical resistance past that point, but if you pull past it it will fire the secondary weapon mode. On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode all the time because there would be no way to find the threshold on a trigger without this functionality.
Of course games could be designed around this and support both - but Sony avoided placing such a requirement on devs so all PS5 games are presumed to be using a PS5 controller when going through cert.
8 replies →
I don’t get why backward compatibility is even expected, other than a nice-to-have. Historically, gamepads weren’t portable between generations of systems.
I’ve got a Logitech steering wheel that I can’t use on 64-bit Windows because of the way the driver was implemented.
1 reply →
Omg, I remember exactly that intermediate joystick. It was lighter than the dualshock, so when you held a dualshock it felt cool, especially when it started rumbling!
I really like the concave analog sticks on that controller. The convex DualShock ones get slippery as hell once the controller is a few years old.
The analog face buttons of the DualShock 2 are cool in concept but always made me press too hard out of fear of not getting up to full speed or whatever in games that used face buttons for acceleration (mostly Burnout 3 and Revenge for me) https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/List_of_console...
> analog face buttons of the DualShock 2 are cool in concept but always made me press too hard
The amount of hand pain this one feature all those years ago has caused.
To this day I find my self having to loosen my grip and press the face buttons lighter because it makes no difference now.
(Though PS5 has added a whole new level of hand ache with adaptive trigger resistance).
1 reply →
Same with the original Sixaxis PS3 controller without rumble! I liked that lightweight controller a lot!
It was also short lived and replaced with the PS3’s version with rumble included – they were saying it’s because of a patent dispute.
Strange analog stick fact: According to YouTuber Wulff Den, the first ever game that used an analog stick for third-person camera rotation was only Super Mario Sunshine in 2002. A GameCube game that came out more than two years after the release of the PS2, and several years after the N64 and the PS1 Dual Analog controller.
I guess some ideas seem only obvious in hindsight.
I scoffed when I first read this, but the more I think about it, the more that might be correct.
Mario 64 had third-person camera movement, but it was with the N64's C-buttons, and had fixed angles, not free movement. Since it didn't have a second joystick, that rules out the N64 (some games did allow you to use a second controller as a second analog stick, but I don't think any third person games did so).
Likewise, the Dreamcast didn't have a second stick, so it's ruled out too. That basically leaves us with the PS1 or an early PS2/Gamecube game. Apparently Quake II on PS1 did allow for the second stick to aim, but that's not third person. The closest I can find is Ico on PS2, which allowed for analog stick camera movement, but I think only in the horizontal direction. Mario Sunshine might well be the first for full camera angle movement, which honestly really surprises me.
Just piling on to say that there was also Alien: Resurrection on PS1 that used the modern dual-stick movement/aiming setup. It was one of the first FPSes to do so, at least as the default control scheme. Reviewers at the time mostly hated it and called it awkward, probably because they were comparing non-aim-assisted console FPS controls to PC FPSes of the era, which is kind of fair tbh. The game's difficulty was also probably too high for the time, especially given the brand-new control style.
2 replies →
I don't think that's true, I remember playing both Jak and Daxter and Ico in either 2000 or 2001 and I think both of those had camera control with the right-hand analog stick.
This one says camera rotation for Jak and Daxter is mapped on the R/L buttons: https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Daxter_controls
But Ico indeed used the stick for the camera: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/ICO/Controls
However, I'm not sure whether it was only used for horizontal rotation or full arbitrary rotation (arbitrary combinations of horizontal and vertical) as in Super Mario Sunshine. But it might very well be the first game to have that, not Mario Sunshine.
3 replies →
I've read some early reviews of a licensed alien shooter where they complain about how confusing the control scheme is - left stick for movement and right for aim.
Before Halo it wasn't really intuitive I guess?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_game...
(For anyone else curious)
1 reply →
That's really strange because that setup was effectively the default for N64 games. Stick under your left thumb for movement and the C buttons under your right thumb for camera control
6 replies →
Yeah, that's another point: the modern first-person controls you describe were once thought to be counterintuitive compared to the old Wolfenstein style controls.
A similar point holds for third-person games: Before Super Mario 64, all third-person games had Wolfenstein style tank controls where left/right rotates the character in place and up/down makes it move forward/backward. E.g. Tomb Raider or Mega Man Legends. The idea to make character movement relative to the camera viewpoint wasn't obvious.
(Though the Tomb Raider developers tried to work around this to a degree by fixing the camera behind the character, which prevented to most counterintuitive control issues Mega Man Legends had, but also meant free camera rotation was impossible.)
So it's unrelated to the analog face buttons?
I don't know what "face buttons" are, but the Analog button only toggles how the Joysticks work, toggling between sending Analog or Digital signals.
The buttons on the front of a playstation controller (d-pad, cross/circle/triangle/square) were pressure sensitive on the ps2/ps2.
256 levels on the ps2, 1024 on the ps3. Few games used this outside of racing games, and they were removed from the ps4 controller. It's most commonly noticed when configuring a ps3 controller on a PC.