19th April 2011, 5:18 PM
Quote:I tend to rate the controllers based on the controller all by itself, it's raw potential, more than how it actually ended up being used. The 3D controller may not have been used much, but for me that doesn't change my opinion of it. It's true that the difference is that Dreamcast accessories actually were released, but again I'm just speaking of the controller's potential more than how it actually got used.Potential matters, but how something was actually used matters too. I do think you need to consider both, if there' a feature but almost no games use it it does make it somewhat less useful, except maybe for future homebrew or hypothetical scenarios of how much better the system could have been supported and stuff. Now those definitely can be fun, but they don't usually result in new things to actually do with, say, those analog triggers on the 3D Controller.
I don't really care either way in that case because the triggers are so comfortable and easy to use (much better than shoulder buttons no question!) that it doesn't really matter, but in some cases it could.
Quote: The big question, as you mention, is just whether or not a signal can be sent to the controller as well as from it. If you've got those two things, you can pretty much attach whatever you want. I believe it could receive one. It's a continuous circuit, so it's just a matter of games being able to modify the circuit from connector to controller into pulses of some kind, at which point there's two way communication. Considering that the PS1 controllers, which originally had no reason to send output to the controller, were still eventually successfully modified with force feedback, I'm pretty sure it'd work out perfectly fine.That's true, they managed to get rumble working on the PSX, it does seem like there's a good chance maybe the Saturn could have done it too... but I know why they didn't try, Nintendo created console rumble in 1997 and that was way too late for the Saturn to respond, it was fading even in Japan by the time Star Fox 64 came out.