Showing posts with label Infrared. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infrared. Show all posts

Hardware Review: DOC'S Infrared Dreamcast Controllers

Wireless controllers are pretty standard in the modern gaming era. The Dreamcast has recently joined the Bluetooth party through the excellent but expensive DreamConn; and the soon to be released wireless peripherals from Retro-bit will hopefully expand that reach (no pun intended) even further, should they get the price point right. However, neither of these options can lay claim to being the original method of playing Dreamcast games without being tethered to a console by a physical cable. Far from it in fact, for you see, way back at the turn of the century an outfit called DOC'S released an infrared controller system for the Dreamcast.
It's hard to ascertain exactly when these controllers were released as information on them is pretty scant online and is mainly limited to old forum threads, but one thing is certain - way before the DreamConn and Retro-bit came along, the Dreamcast did indeed have a wireless controller and with this review we'll take a look at the physical design of the controllers, the antiquated connection method and investigate just how well the DOC'S hardware works. It's also worth noting that DOC'S also produced infrared peripherals for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation too, and while these are a little more common than the Dreamcast variant, they're still fascinating from a technical standpoint.
First though, a history lesson. DOC'S was a subsidiary of electronics firm Arista Interactive, a company now trading under the name Arista Manufacturing and you can find their website here. Oddly, there is no mention whatsoever of the DOC'S brand on the current site and the firm now appears to be completely out of the gaming business, but for a short period in the late 1990s and early 2000s (I can't be sure which), this outfit was doing some pretty admirable things with wireless console gaming technology, even if it doesn't really stand up by today's standards...