koitsu wrote:
Re: Joust and left/right only: arcade joysticks -- not necessarily those damn "arcade sticks" you can buy for home -- have what I call "limiters", which are
a sort of plastic thingus that goes around the underside of the stick (what I'm referring to in photo is the green plastic with tons of holes in it), only permitting certain directions -- usually 2-way (L/R or U/D), 4-way, or 8-way -- in relation to where the switches are. I imagine someone could probably make one that made the thing work 4-way but rotated 45 degrees. (I own an arcade cabinet (
CANDY 25) which is how/why I'm familiar with all this, heh
)
Doing this inside of a NES joypad, however, isn't really possible -- the thickness of the entire joypad would have to be increased to make room for the limiter, and the general pad area redesigned to be more like an arcade stick.
In general, my opinion is the same as rainwarrior's though -- "The person imposing a horizontal orientation on the controller you're holding is you." Spot on.
Unfortunately, Joust isn't the best example of a
gate (typically the term you're referring to as the limiter), as its joystick is truly restricted to two directions. I went ahead and snapped these shots just now:
On that note, a Japanese-style Sanwa or Seimitsu arcade joystick has a square gate, which is already primed for diagonals (and isometric) use.