PRODUCT TESTING-VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS

December 4th, 2007

Roast and his six year old son, Roast Jr., enjoy an evening of gaming in the living room, inside Roast’s house:

Roast:  Fuck!  Fuck mother FUCK GOD DAMN IT!  This is fucking HORSE SHIT!!!  You cock-mouthed-cunt-faced BITCH!  Mother BITCH FUCK!

Roast Jr.:  Dad, you aren’t supposed to say bad words.

Roast:  But did you see that?  That was fucking… That was not fair!

Roast Jr.:  It’s ok dad.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Wanna play a different game?

Roast puts a different game into a brand new Nintendo Wii.  The game loads up, and once again some serious father son bonding is happening.

15 minutes later though, a simulated bowling ball rolls into a simulated gutter, and Roast Jr. jumps up and down with joy because his dad just bowled a gutter. 

That gutter means Roast Sr. just lost a video game to his 26 (yeah, twenty-six fucking!) years younger son.

Roast:  Oh FUCK YOU GUTTER!  Try and gutter ball this you SON OF A FUCKING CUNT ASSED WHORE!

With that, Roast hurls his Wii-Mote into the 46 inch flat panel LCD screen TV.  Roast then storms out of the room.

Technology in this day and age is awesome.  To say that the Nintendo Wii and a 46 inch LCD screen are impressive when compared to a 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System and a 19 inch screen CRT television is a massive understatement.  But what about the quality of all this new technology? 

I’ve tested every Nintendo controller that has come out, not to mention many other brands such as Sony Playstation, Playstation 2, and Xbox.

With all this testing, I can honestly say that my data backs up the fact that while new technology is more impressive, it’s also exponentially more fragile. 

For example, I was 8 years old the first time I hurled my NES controller into the screen of my 19 inch TV back in 1985. 

Sure, I was young and weak then, but I was 29 the last time I did it (about 4 months ago when I lost a $50 bet to Shifty that I could beat Contra dieing no more than three times). 

That same controller, the one I got with the only video game system I never sold, is still fully functional, even with 22 years of solid TV hurling in its life time. 

And, as a side note, no TV was ever broken with it.  It requires a bowling ball to break a CRT TV, I know this from experience.

Fast forward 22 years later, and you hurl a wireless controller into a television now, you just bought yourself a new controller ($25), a new television ($2,400), and if you were lucky enough to have a shitty wall mount for it ($75), a whole new entertainment system full of electronics since the TV fell down and crushed everything under it (You don’t want to know).

How did taking out a little frustration go from free (after you bought the system of course) to over $3000 worth of damage?  Why have the inventors of today forsaken us? 

Do they think we are more cooled tempered then we used to be?  Maybe they think we are weakened from two decades of video game play.

Or do they just short sighted?

Here is a list of video game controllers I have personally tested, and the game they were most likely broken on:

NES Controller:

Super NES Controller:

Broken:  15 minutes after renting the game Mortal Kombat with Shifty.

As soon as it came out, I wanted a Super NES.  It took a couple years before I could afford one, but when I finally got one I reveled in the amazing 16 bit graphics. 

(By the way, what the fuck good is 16 bits?  The laptop I’m typing this on has like a 3 million bit processor.  Two of them actually.)

Anyway, everybody was vastly impressed with the new system, and even more impressed with the new controller that featured a new idea in that it had “Shoulder Buttons” that could be pressed with the index fingers. 

Those buttons became very important as Nintendo strived to show off the new controller.

So, when both of those shoulder buttons fucking broke during the first heated round of Mortal Combat, it kind of fucked up the whole system.  And that was BEFORE I hurled that fucking piece of shit into the TV.

I have no idea how many times I took those controllers apart and super glued the buttons back together, but it was way more than it was worth to play that fucking Super NES. 

I had that system for less than 18 months.

Nintendo 64:  Notice the fagtastic designer colors available too all the sex starved teenagers out there.

Broken:  After 4 strait hours of playing Golden Eye.  Again, with Shifty.  Mother-Fucking Shifty.   

The little joy stick dealies tend to break until you learn to throw it correctly to hit bottom first.

The best thing about this fucked up, three pronged, which-fucking-handle-do-I-use-for-this-game controller was that it was heavy.  Add in a rumble pack, and you had some serious fucking demolition power when you threw your best fast ball after getting sniped yet again by some cold hearted dick-less-cock-fucker. 

(Shifty)

Nintendo Game Cube:

Broken:  In the store, standing at the demo. 

And you can’t even throw it, because it’s hooked up to some kind of restraint system. 

I never got the chance to buy the system as I was immediately thrown out of the store.  No matter, the controllers were even more homo-rific than the N64.

Nintendo Wii:

Broken:  Playing Wii bowling with Roast Jr. as you have already read.

So, back to the original question:  How ever did we come to a place in time where this could happen? 

I have a working theory that as the American gamer becomes fatter, and the Japanese designer becomes smarter (thus more dainty) that they figure that they can use flimsy controllers that break more easily. 

Very similar to how when my 25 year old American made full size pick-up truck gets rear ended by a full size Toyota pick-up truck.  I drive away, and the Toyota gets towed to the junk yard, and the driver goes to the hospital.

It’s been a slippery slope towards where we now are, but it’s the only explanation that I can think of.

Anyway, fuck this.  All this reminiscence of old gaming (not to mention a half of 5th of Jack Daniels) is making me antsy.  To hell with this research, I’m going to go play some Tecmo Bowl on the NES, and see if I can’t get good old LT to bust my current record of 24 sacks in a single game.  And I’ll do it on my old TV. 

And when I fail, I’ll toss my Nintendo controller at that television, not to mention a half full glass of whiskey. 

With no repercussions except for a sticky floor in the morning.

Roast out.

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