The Atari Jaguar Controller

The Atari Jaguar Controller

(This suggestion from King of Suggestions, @JayTay)

the Atari Jaguar controller

A few months back I did an expansive post on which controller was the best, and it was clear then that the Atari Jaguar pad was never going to be in contention. As I said back then:

The Jaguar controller is just stupid. It is superficially like a Mega Drive pad, only with a telephone numeric keypad glued underneath. That might have been fine back in the days of the Atari 2600 and Intellivision when games would make use of them (remember those maths titles?) but on the Jaguar it was a waste, especially since so many Jaguar games were just ports of Mega Drive and SNES games that already didn’t need those buttons. At least you could have game-specific overlays on the controller, I suppose. Yay?

It was big and didn’t have enough buttons where it actually needed them, especially when you realise that by then the Mega Drive had a 6 button pad. No shoulder buttons, when the SNES had them already and the PlayStation and Saturn were just around the corner, were a mistake: One thing the Jaguar did well at the time was 3D games like Doom and Alien vs Predator, and shoulder buttons would have made strafing and/or turning much easier.

All those buttons at the bottom, though. I suppose somebody, somewhere, thought it was a good idea – after all, it worked for a very small number of Atari 2600 games – although not a single title for the Jaguar uses them effectively. Most of them are impossible to reach mid game, and if you lose the paper overlay things are made more complicated.

On the plus side, they’re not as uncomfortable to hold as they appear, and they’re quite light due to being mostly empty.

There are worse controllers. But not many first party ones.

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