Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

Another fairly recent cybernetic innovation has certainly enhanced the “feel” of many videogames: force feedback. Sony’s Dual Shock controller is so named because the videogame can tell it to vibrate or “rumble” in the player’s hands. This vibrational feedback can be used in a driving game, to simulate the shuddering of braking or a skid into a gravel pit; it can add a physical dimension to damage done to the player’s character by bullet or blunt instrument; in Metal Gear Solid, a game that makes splendidly creative use of this extra mode of information, it even simulates the thumping of the main character’s heartbeat when he is looking through the scope of his sniper rifle—the rhythmical jittering of the control pad justifiably makes it difficult to aim accurately. We can expect that in the future controllers will provide more subtle gradations of vibration, as well as physically resisting the player’s movement and even, as hypothesized in Kurt Andersen’s 1999 novel Turn of the Century, changing temperature according to the action onscreen.

Perhaps the most enjoyable recent cybernetic novelty is that offered by Konami’s fabulously eccentric Dance Dance Revolution (now known in the West by the inferior title Dancing Stage), in which the

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