Comments on: Getting Ready to Rumble

By: duckofindeed

duckofindeed — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 20:31:29 +0000

I didn’t think much of the rumble pack at first and never had one for the N64, but now I’m bothered when it’s not there. I’ve gotten so used to it, I don’t notice it when it’s there, but I do notice when it’s gone. So when playing “FFX” and stuff like that, I now need to turn the rumble pack on, and whenever the rumble stops working in my 360 controller when the battery gets low, it distresses me.

By: Hatm0nster

Hatm0nster — Wed, 15 May 2013 02:38:09 +0000

I’ve seen that tape! A friend of mine has it and showed it to me about a year ago. Game advertising in the ’90′s…yeah.

Anyway you’re right. The rumble pack was such a novelty back in the day, but I never saw as something that would fade. As history has proven the addition it made to the experience proved much too valuable. We’ve gotten past taking it for granted, now we barely remember what it was like without. (Unless you play a lot of older stuff, which make the contrast even more stark and incredible.)

By: duckofindeed

duckofindeed — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:46:57 +0000

I remember the rumble pack seemed very mysterious to me back then. Some N64 games would mention that certain features would only work with the rumble pack, but I never bothered to buy it. (Even though it caused me to miss some things in “Ocarina of Time”.) Even though I refused to buy this accessory, when I first tried the GameCube out at a friend’s house, I was quite thrilled that the controllers now came with rumble packs. We played “Super Smash Bros. Melee”, and I thought it was so cool you could feel even the characters’ footsteps through the controller. You’d feel the rumble pack more when Bowser moved around on screen, and it was pretty awesome.

Now every controller has it, and we take it for granted. It’s weird going back to old games that don’t have it. And games that have it turned off, I now must go in and turn it on. The rumble just must be there now. It’s not the same experience without it.