NeoTechni’s review of the Sphere360 controller for the original Playstation!

It comes with a training CD, which would not boot on a PS2 (it said a condition in main.c was false, press start and select to reset, and would not reset. The PlayStation logo wouldn’t display either) It also wouldn’t boot initially on a PS1. It would freeze at what should have been the PlayStation logo but only showed SONY. After a bit it started playing music with the PlayStation noise, it was weird. It says it’s a licensed disc, but it acts like it isnt. After a minute of random music, it boots. It has 2 tutorials, one where it shows you want direction to move the sphere to do an action, and asks you to repeat it. It’s not very good cause it’s using a 2D graphic to show a 3D movement, and it doesn’t map very well. The other is a little flight sim training, where you fly through rings like the training mode in Star Fox it would have been neat if they added a dog fight. Maybe there is one later on. After a while I realized I can use the dpad to steer so I just used that. The on-screen “helper” robot even insults you if you can’t figure it out (The academy always sends me the slow ones)

ASCII really went the extra mile with the packaging. The front has transparent plastic with the controller name written on it, the sides have holes in them to look like a grill. It’s somewhat bigger than a GameCube. The back of the box has one of those PS1 supported-feature icons that says “Six Axis Controller”. Heh. There’s even a sheet of thicker plastic that holds it up on an angle, and a piece of cardboard to hide the cable behind for display. It comes with a long list of games it supports, a lot longer than I expected. Pretty much every PS1 game works with it, just some better than others. I’ll have to grab a copy of Descent.

The controller itself feels like a Dreamcast controller. In that it has angular wings, that make your wrists angle inward too much. It has a 9 different modes (like how Protoshock can act like the Flight Stick) and even comes with a sticker to help you remember them all which is nice cause I usually tape a piece of paper to my controllers to label the controls. But there is no flat surface on the controller to stick it to. The rubber sphere itself feels exactly like the one on the SpaceOrb 360. I think I read somewhere they are made by the same people, and that people prefer the PS1 one because it has more buttons. It doesn’t have much give to it, it will only let you move slightly in any direction. I would have liked some sort of free-floating trackball but I guess that’d be a bit difficult to attach, but I digress. The buttons have a nice click to them, circle has a little less than the others. They’re wider than PS1′s regular buttons, but more spongy. The dpad is like XBOX360′s, in that it’s a sucky disc, though they did put a cross shape on top and it’s not as inaccurate as 360′s.