There once was a developer and this was good.  Then for some unknown reason this developer felt is necessary to subject the planet to pain, frustration, and misery....thus began the making of the Playstation controller.         What the hell was Sony smoking to think this controller was a good thing .  The controller feels too small in my hand, and those two protrusions dig into my hand.  The buttons are ok, however the four main button are aligned as follows:                                         o                                       o   o                                         o which is all fine and dandy, except they are labelled with a symbol of a square, triangle, a circle and an X.  This sorta boggles the mind.  With the Saturn, 3DO, Genesis, and SNES (excluding the SNES reversal of A and , the buttons are labelled with letters and in alphabetical order, so when you are playing you can remember where a button is....the logic behind remember where the square button is lost on me.  Sure you will get used to it, but tell me why they would screw up a simple concept.   However, this isn't the controllers biggest flaw....that crowning achivement goes to the pad itself.  Yes it is a pad, with four raised bumps on it.....this would be fine, however the brains at Sony decided to encase the pad IN the controller casing, leaving only the four bumps poking through the casing...which look like psudo-buttons.  IT SUCKS!  Not since getting my SNES have I been so disappointed with a controller.  This hunk o' crap is really lousy!  Flowing moves like semi-circles are not easy to do and even with a lot of practice I still have lots of trouble doing them reliably.         As for the rest of the machine...well here it is.  It is small...about the same footprint (I stole that saying from some magazine) as a magazine and about as thick as, say 7 Game Pro magazines.  Set up was similar to the Saturn with no hitches.  Then I notice...NO INTERNAL BATTERY!!!!  I paid pretty well the same amount for my Saturn with VF as I did for the Playstation and Toshinden (which I had to buy separately...'cuz the Playstation has no pack in).  The absence of the battery means I have to fork out MORE money for a memory card if I want to save games!  What a gip!  Also for the same amount of $$ you don't get a cartridge slot which I'm sure will be an asset to the future of the Saturn.         I ran the demo disk that came with it and the first thing I noticed was that the FMV playback looked clearer...which is great....however, I personally am getting sick of FMV....if I wanna watch a movie I'll rent one!         The games on the DEMO were mixed and there are 4 playable demos.   The first ESPN Extreme Games, takes Road Rash and puts it in four new modes: inline skates, skateboard, bike, and ludge (that snow thingy...I have aweful spelling.)  Demo looked GREAT, hopefully the full game is faster.  Jumping, ducking, punching, kicking - No problems here.         The next demo was for Jumping Flash....a Doom _style_ platform games.  The graphics, music and controls sucked.  Neat idea...however Rise of the Triad, Dark Forces, Doom and the likes have pretty well done everything that was done here, only looking much better.  The polygon badguys looked bad, as did most of the game. (blech!!).         Next was Toshinden...which I will review below, since I bought the full version.         The final playable demo was for Wipeout which is a futuristic, hovering racing game....sorta felt like Hi-Octane on the PC.   Looks great, kinda sluggish.  I'll wait and see the finished product.         The other demos were just for viewing and most contained FMV and not a lot of game footage.         Toshinden....hmm.....it look GREAT (standing still).  The sound is ok, I didn't think it was anything wonderful and of course due to the pad, the controls suck! (yeah I might get used to it....but why should I have to suffer from a bad controller!)  The game itself borrows heavily from VF, but I think it doesn't have as many _frame_s.  You have a weak and fierce slash (TRIANGLE AND SQUARE) and a weak and fierce kick (CIRCLE and X - see my point)  Each person doesn't have nearly the same depth of moves as VF and I didn't think they were as cool either.  Toshinden has adopted the Street Fighter/MK idea of projectiles in combat.  I personally think projectiles should be left out of combat games as it keeps you far away from each other and the entire game becomes a shooting match.  VF was great for intense, in-your-face, fighting, something that is lost in Toshinden.  The BEST thing I thought Toshinden gave you was the ability to move around you opponent.  With the use of the top buttons on that basterized controller you can move into and out of the screen which makes for some interesting moves.  This actually could be incorperated   into future VF games quite nicely.         Well that's about it for the Playstation.  I wasn't nearly as impressed as when I got my Saturn and if I wasn't opening up a Video Game retail store, I don't think I would have even got a Playstation.           Remember....looks are superficial, it is games that make a machine.  My SNES has better hardware than my Genesis....but I have far more games for my Genesis and play it far more often than my SNES because the games are FAR superior for the most part.         There it is.....take it all with a grain a salt.  I am admittedly pro-SEGA (especially now that I learned I WILL be getting VF remix after all).  I felt I was being pretty honest!         Any questions....mail me                                   -POOF-

at unless the L,R,U and D are promininent on the pad.   Yeah but there should be a point on the joypad that lets you do a diagonal move without pressing two points.  The Sony control pad has four direction buttons...in order to do a diagonal movement, you must press two.  For example...down-left, you must press both down and left buttons.  Maybe I'm just used to the Saturn control pad, but I was able to do special moves (fireball) for Street Fighter:The Movie on the Saturn very easily once I got the timing.  I have played Toshiden for 20+ Hours and still can't get a special move (fireball) consistently.  I have better luck when I don't even try...like doing a bunch of circling movements and pressing buttons.  I firmly believe this to be because there's no diagonal point on the joypad.   Come to think of it, even the SNES was easier to use although it's very similar to the PSX's.  That's because it had a center point that connected all four direction pads...which allowed you to center your thumb in the joypad and get diagonals much easily. I dunno...this point's probably not important as hopefully third parties will come out with their own designs..and with most games, this is not an issue.  I just think that the Sony's one detracts from gameplay which again is just my opinion. Brian

           What the hell was Sony smoking to think this controller was a     good thing .  The controller feels too small in my hand, and those two Feels fine in my hand; My friends prefer the larger Professional pad, tho'    when you are playing you can remember where a button is....the logic    behind remember where the square button is lost on me.  Sure you will Wow, I've had it for a whole day, and I've already memorized which button is which

Hello,         I too own a Saturn and bought a Playstation.  I have to agree about most of what was said about the controllers.  The control pad (or lack there of) is bad, plus the directional buttons they use instead are square and tend to dig into my thumb after playing for a long time (like 8 hours of Toshinden). Other than that I like the main system, as for the battery...its annoying but it doesn't bother me that much.         As far as toshinden goes.  Its pretty cool, graphically its awesome. The controls for it do suck, partially becuase of the controllers, partially because of the setup for the buttons.  All of the special moves require rolling the direction in some form or another, this is almost impossible to do with these controllers.  Although the computer has no problem doing them  I would have much preferred them using something more akin to VF with punch,punch,kick or some such.         Anyway, I think both systems are awesome.  If VF and Toshinden are both on par concerning the amount of programming skill that went into them, I would have to say that the Playstation has a faster graphics engine.  FMV seems the same on both systems, no jerkiness on the Playstation that someone had posted about before.         Thanks,         Ron.

       What the hell was Sony smoking to think this controller was a good thing .  The controller feels too small in my hand, and those two protrusions dig into my hand.  The buttons are ok, however the four main button are aligned as follows:                                        o                                      o   o                                        o Interesting reviews. I am considering getting a Playstation so that I can get new games when I want them. (I know, wait a few weeks for new Saturn games). I have seen a 3rd party controller that has a D-PAD!!! Thats right, not the button crap that comes from Sony. Anyway, since you have a PSX, you need to find one of these and buy it. Only played a little with the PSX, but the other controller is MUCH MUCH BETTER!!! (IMO). Ken

   The final playable demo was for Wipeout which is a futuristic, hovering racing game....sorta felt like Hi-Octane on the PC.   Looks great, kinda sluggish.  I'll wait and see the finished product.  Sluggish???  I don't think so.  Maybe you were hitting the wall every 2 seconds...