Dear Future Gamer,

"Arguably the finest console peripheral of all time, Sony's Dual Shock analogue controller is about to get a facelift..." Arguably is about right. Finest? What are you going on about ? Okay, it vibrates and doesn't need batteries, and the L2/R2 buttons are better positioned and larger than they used to be on the original PS pads but that's about it.

You know what I mean - the 'analogue' sticks have a massive dead zone in their travel. I'm guessing the first time you played a racing game with one you tried to turn really gently and it didn't turn, so you push a little harder. Still nothing, push a little harder. Your car turns 90 degrees and you crash. Arse you think. It's not like you can't get used to it, but it's still a LONG way from perfect.

I've heard that Sony are making the PS2 compatible with the old controllers, but they’d better do a new dual analogue because theirs doesn't compare to the Dreamcast one, let alone the almost perfect N64 controller.

Oh and if you can't plug a PocketStation into it that will also be a bad thing - just look how well the Dreamcast VMS works: the potential for secret stuff, daft pictures etc.

So anyway, please retract the previous statement or I for one will sulk about it for ages.

Cheers,

Alex Darby Alex Darby (Imperial game designer and programmer)

FG: You’ll get no retraction from us Alex. We will argue that it’s one of the finest console peripherals of all time. And yes, it takes a while to get used to and use properly but once you are there you won’t look back.