Admit it, you emulate. You emulate all the time, and you love it.
It?s okay, we?ve all done it. Without emulation, the classic gaming scene as we know it wouldn?t exist. If not for emulation, we probably wouldn?t have discovered all of the hidden gems of generations past. There?s no way we could afford most of these games, and imagine the years a single game could potentially take to track down. Better hope it?s good. My first experience playing earthbound was back in 1998 on a copy of ZSNES, and most of the most treasured games in my collection were first revealed to me by ArchNahco and TortillaGodzilla.
The biggest issue I?ve always had with emulation, however, is the controls. I spent weeks in the late 90?s trying to play Contra III on my Gateway?s keyboard, warping my hand in a way that will forever alter my ability to play the recorder. Indeed, for a long time it was difficult to accurately control your games via emulation, and even if you found a game pad that you could hook up to your computer you?d still have to find drivers and pray that your emulator of choice supported it. Thankfully, with the advent of USB, that?s all changed.
The USB port is a wonderful thing, and has completely revolutionized emulation. Dozens of computer companies make generic gamepads that will suit the needs of most emulated games, and there are a good few options if you want to get the most accurate feel. Sites like Retrozone provide some excellent options, you can buy adaptors to hook up the same controllers you?ve used all your life, or you can buy pre-modded controllers that you can plug right in and start using within seconds. All of these options are by all means good. I?ve used them all and I?ve been happy with the experience. That being said, I think I?ve found my controller for the foreseeable emulated future.
Sega released a USB pad modeled after the Saturn?s controller a few years ago, and they sold like hotcakes. The Saturn controller is considered by many to be one of the best controllers of all time, and I?m inclined to agree. Naturally, people bought up these controllers up, and now they go for the price of most of the Saturn?s best games themselves, bummer.
Thank goodness for China.
A quick ebay query of ?Sega Saturn USB? will provide wonderfully inexpensive knockoffs by a company called G-TRON. Now, in case you don?t already know G-TRON, they?re a company who has been making these Saturn USB controllers for at least as long as I?ve searched for them on ebay. While of dubious origin, these controllers are ridiculously cheap (They can be found for as little as $6.99 with free shipping) and appear to be made from a mold almost identical to the actual Saturn controllers. The quality is around 80% of what a real controller feels like, and the cord is long enough for use with a computer. These pads are nicely made facsimiles of their ancestors in true six button glory, which leads to their most unexpected advantage.
As you may or may not know, the Saturn has six face buttons and two shoulder buttons. This makes the Saturn pad excellent for fighting and arcade games, as the six button setup is pretty common. However, most consoles before the Saturn had less than six buttons, leaving you with several unused buttons that do nothing unless you map them. Most emulators now have dozens of extras built into them ? video recorders, slow motion, save states etc. Usually these would be nice little features that you could use if you remembered the keyboard shortcut, but most often these were left unused, lost in the shuffle of quasi-legal gaming. With a controller though, you can map these features to buttons on the pad itself. As the SNES only has four face buttons, you can map two of them to take screenshots and start recording footage respectively. This is an incredibly useful tool, especially for budding game reviewers. While a purist will capture footage for the original hardware, you can easily make do with footage quelled from your emulator of choice as having a button mapped to the pad itself makes the recording process virtually seamless. The buttons can be mapped to whatever you?d like, so I suggest tooling around in the preferences of your emulator of choice to see how you can best make use of it.
So while emulation may never feel the same as playing classic games on the consoles they were made for, with a USB Saturn pad will make things one step closer to feeling like the real thing. The build quality won?t be perfect, and the shipping may take a while, but for $6.99, it?s well worth the meager investment to use all the built in features of your favorite emulator while still protecting your future ability to play the recorder.
Source: http://www.retrogamenetwork.com/2012/12/24/essential-equipment-the-sega-saturn-usb-controller/
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