I recently came by this comment:
[…] The younger readers probably have no idea what it was like having consoles that came with only wired controllers and then worrying that they might drag the console to the floor during an intense session because those controllers were connected pretty tight on those things. They’re so spoiled these days lol.
It was sometime during the last couple of years that I decided to play Smash Bros. Ultimate on Switch.
As someone who has played the series from the very beginning, I naturally opted to play the game with a Gamecube controller, since I never really got used to playing it with anything else.
I scrambled to find one of those USB Gamecube adapters and plugged my controller with it into the Nintendo Switch. It was then that I realized how cumbersome it was trying to get the wires go somewhere where they wouldn’t be in the way.
Was it always like this? I didn’t remember ever having problems with wires ever before.
That’s right: I don’t remember wired controllers ever being a problem. At least, not until wireless became the defacto method.
Back in the days of CRT TVs and wired controllers, it was common to sit closer to the TV.
That should be somewhat obvious, since TVs were much smaller than nowadays. And if you had a console, the controllers had limited reach (due to being wired), which further incentivized getting closer.
So, was it common to trip on the controller wires? It’d be interesting to hear statistics, but at least that never happened in our household.
Electronics were expensive, so it was normal to keep them out of harm’s way (including the controllers).
You can also probably see from the photo that my room wasn’t exactly tidy. My childhood home often had legos and toys scattered all over the floor, since my parents weren’t particularly bothered by stuff lying around. Maybe it made us better at avoiding stepping or tripping on things?
Note that in both pictures, the consoles are placed under the TV, and close to the floor.
It wasn’t until the 7th generation (Wii, PS3, XBox 360) that I started placing consoles higher: even on the space on top of the TV.
It was only then that playing Gamecube games on the Wii became troublesome. Gamecube controllers (aside from Wavebird, which I never owned) were still wired. Having them hang from on top of the TV and flop around in front of it wasn’t ideal.
But that wasn’t a real issue, just one created by myself since I had decided to place the Wii up there. If the console was anywhere lower, having wired controllers would have been a non-issue for me.
The comment in the beginning mentions “dragging the console to the floor during an intense session”.
I remember only one wire-related accident in my life.
And it had nothing to do with controllers… I used to have wired USB headphones, and so, during an intensive World of Warcraft play session I managed to trip onto the wire while trying to hurry from my PC to the bathroom.
So, clearly there’s dangers in wired peripherals.
And yet, I can’t think of that danger as much more than a rare phenomenon. Something that wouldn’t happen more than once in a household.
People do learn from their mistakes, right?
I’ve never had a Wiimote slip from my hand, but still many people have thrown Wiimotes at their TVs. Hopefully no more than once…
