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And the award for worst controller ever goes to…
I had a more normal 3rd party controller but it was still stupidly big.
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Still beats flying
Yeah its more awkward when your copilot is watching you deep throat the throttle.
It was designed at a transition point between joysticks and the D-pad. Your right hand goes on the right prong for the A, B, and C buttons. Your left hand should be on the center prong when using a game designed for the joystick, or on the left prong when using a game designed for the D-pad. It’s not the most elegant design, but it’s really not that hard to figure out.
It was weird going back to Goldeneye with the N64 controller for a second but then you realize “oh, just hold the center nub with your right hand and it feels like any twin stick shooter today”
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark both actually have a set of control schemas…
Where you play with two of these, at the same time.
As well as a number of different one handed configurations, that essentially make it possible to play those games with hands on the left and right prongs, left and center, or right and center.
You may or may not find some of them wonky, but … yeah, it was a perhaps needlessly versatile design, though also very innovative, though also a bit weird.
I’m pretty sure it was literally the first home game console controller with an analog stick, an actual true analog stick, not counting joysticks with huge bases and a button or two.
This is also the same era where the early Mario party games had minigames where you were supposed to spin thr control stick in a circle very fast.
So uh, beyond that being terrible for the controller…
A good number of kids figured out that you can just grip the center prong and then palm the stick, move it much much faster… but also tearing through your own hand and giving you blisters.
So Nintendo stopped putting those kinds of minigames in Mario Party, and basically issued a health advisory telling people not to do that.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/nintendo-offers-glove-to-prevent-joystick-injuries/
… Apparently they actually got sued.
… and offered to give the injured parties… gloves.
Yeah, I played the N64 version of Rainbow 6, and that game seemed to want me to regularly switch between joystick and D-pad, so I guess some 3rd party developers didn’t get the memo, but you’re not supposed to design games that way. Technically the Sega Saturn had a joystick on one of it’s controllers, but you could also get a D-pad only controller. My friend had that Mario party glove, but we wouldn’t let him use it, since it was an unfair advantage. He had to rip the skin off his hands just like the rest of us.
Hah, oh god I remember Rainbow Six on the N64, yes, the controls were clunky as fuck, but, it… was a pretty insane thing to even attempt a tactical shooter with specific squad commands.
I remember just basically figuring out how to map out a good engagement plan for like… an hour.
Then you hit go and basically, the game can often basically just play itself.
It’s honestly baffling people still riff on this. Anyone that’s held the controller for 2 seconds understands it.
It’s gotta be Zoomers looking at it with no frame of reference. Anyone who played this at the time would have recognized the layout here; they were taking the SNES controller, adding an extra set of buttons to be more in line with the 6 button layout popularized by Sega, and then sticking a joystick in the middle. Assigning the c-buttons as directional was actually pretty insightful. They work for camera controls on stuff like Mario 64, but they also function as a top-row/bottom-row for strong-attack/light-attack on D-pad fighting games like Mortal Kombat.
It’s not just Zoomers, I grew up when the big systems were PSX and N64. I thought it then, and it still strikes me as valid, that controller looks as though it were designed by some entity entirely unfamiliar with human anatomy. The fact that you could figure out what they intended is ultimately irrelevant as to whether or not it was a good design. The dual shock came out a year after the N64, with a much more comfortable to use anh intuitive design, and I think it’s telling that pretty much every major console since has used a controller that takes far more after the Dual Shock design in terms of placement and orientation of the joysticks in respect to other buttons.
I just left two long comments about this, but tl;dr, there’s no DualShock without Nintendo inventing this derpy thing first. DualShock was an industry defining design, but they were refining the functionality Nintendo created.
You’re right it’s just the system had very few games where the d pad was the obvious primary control device.
What everyone here is really missing is the ahead of its time Golden eye 2 controller two stick setup. They knew where things were going the controller was just a little too soon.
Then there was Turok where the movement forward/back and strafe left/right was on the C-Buttons…
Or you’re like me and you put your hand on the left pron and stretch your thumb onto the joystick anyway. Middle prong be damned.
How the hell did you use the Z-trigger?
Middle finger stretched to it.
I apparently have large hands.
LOL, yeah, you’d kinda have to.
Yup. Middle finger. It’s a large hand person thing.
Same same. Alternatively sitting cross-legged use the ball of your foot to press Z
This is why hiring the “why not both” girl as lead hardware designer is not always the best strategy
I mean, at the time it was designed, “both,” pretty much was the right choice. Without the D-pad a lot of the titles they could reliably develop, like fighting or puzzle games, would have been incredibly difficult to get working well, but without the joystick, they couldn’t launch with titles like Mario 64. It’s easy to look at the PS1 Duelshock controller and assume they were idiots, but original PS1 controller only had a D-pad. The N64 beat the PS1 to the joystick by two years, and while it was much derpier than the Playstation’s solution, it was integrated from day one.
The N64 beat the PS1 to the joystick by two years, a
It came out about a year and half after the N64. The N64 June 23rd 1996, and all other markets saw a later release. The first DualShock was released in November 1997. and I would say the extra time to reflect and refine the design was well worth it, and something Nintendo should have considered as well.
Being first to the market with a new concept isn’t always great if it means you rush a subpar product out the door to try and beat the competition to it.
The N64 invented 3D platforming with this controller, which is why Mario 64 puts things like Crash Bandicoot and Laura Croft to shame; they’re creation of the C-buttons allowed for a free moving camera that could be used simultaneously with the joystick, which no one else could do at the time. Here’s an old promotional video for the DualShock where a developer even says, “What I’m really excited about is that we can do this on Sony, we don’t have to go do it on Nintendo.”
Nintendo invented an entirely novel system of inputs to give unprecedented control over a 3D environment. Sony looked at what Nintendo was doing and found a way to simplify those controls, and it was a great design; it’s the template for every modern controller. But criticizing Nintendo for not taking the time to, “reflect or refine,” the design, even though the design was a groundbreaking achievement in game development at a time when there was literally a new dimension being added to games, is ridiculous.
On today’s standard controller layout, it’s easy to use both D-Pad and left Joystick without a third grip. I don’t see how that wouldn’t have been possible in 1996?
It wasn’t impossible, it just hadn’t been done yet. 3D games were a new concept, and no one was really sure how to implement them. A joystick made the most sense for moving a character through a 3D world, but the D-pad would work better for pretty much every game that had been developed up until that point. The Sega Saturn and the Playstation both prioritized the D-pad; they both launched with D-pad controllers (the Saturn had a joystick-optional controller, but it’s games could be played with the D-pad). The drawback to their designs was camera controls; their games either needed a fixed camera (like Crash Bandicoot) or camera switching (like Laura Croft), where you alternate using the D-pad to, “look,” or, “walk.”
The N64 controller’s design was basically a, “best of both worlds,” senerio. Hold it one way and it was a standard D-pad with 6 buttons. Hold it the other and it’s a joystick controller with a small D-pad (the c-buttons) and three regular buttons (A, B, and the Z-Trigger). That design made Mario 64 the industry standard for 3D platforming; the c-buttons could control a fluid, free moving camera without giving up access to the joystick. It was revolutionary and set a new standard for 3D gaming…for about a year. Then Sony invented the Duelshock controller, which pretty much every modern controller is based on. But for a while, the N64 controller was the only controller capable of fully utilizing the joystick and the D-pad, and years later, it gets ridiculed for being first.
Idk if both was the “right” choice, but given the virtual boy was a ~year prior… there is definitely wisdom in playing things a little more cautious, which is what I would say the N64 controller represents: a justified fear to commit to the analog stick and remove the D-pad.
Honestly, I think, “both,” really was the only choice. No one had developed for a joystick-exclusive console since the Atari days. Most third-party developers would have had a tough time porting and adapting their games over to an exclusively joystick layout. The other consoles of that generation, the Saturn and Playstation, both had D-pad only controllers and D-pad/joystick combination controllers; no one went joystick only. The N64 design was imperfect, but it allowed them to launch Mario 64 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy in the same year (and it was a step up from Sega’s crack at it).
Honestly, this picture is close to accurate if you were trying to input the code for the debug menu in Shadows of The Empire.
The purple version was the best. Mine from 1999 has had the most use and still works the best. I’ve bought new aftermarket controllers but none stand up to the old translucent purple.
The designer of the controller had 3 arms and always wondered why people didn’t like the design.
Better have a long tongue to reach the “Z” button with.
The Z-spot
… or a better knowledge of your own anatomy and how angles work.
Thats like 4 to 4 1/2 inches to get to the Z button.
If your girlfriend can tickle your pickle, you should be able to uh, handle the plunge here.
Just relax, and say ‘Ahh’.
Yoshis tongue was based on the lead designers
Regular length tongue is fine. It’s just not inserted all the way in the picture.
Understood. My experience deepthroating N64 controllers is …uh… limited.
“Speedrunners hate this one trick”
The left hand goes on the left or the middle depending on the game.
Whatever floats your goat
Gotta get good enough to throat it down then tongue the clit
Should be 3 mouths.
I still don’t get how they ever approved this design.
It was the early days of 3d gaming consoles. And as nobody knew how control schemes will develop they created this controller with three different kinds of input schemes:
- Left on left/ right on right for traditional plattformers
- Left on middle / right on right for 3d games that require that analog stick
- Left on left / right on middle … yeah I don’t know either. Twin stick shooters perhaps?
Is there any game that utilized the d pad though? The d pad and the L button must have gone down in history as the most useless buttons ever put on a controller.
I at least know about Kirby 64 and Pokemon Stadium.
Pretty much every 2D game did.
Fighting games, esp if you were old school
The AKI wrestling games like Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy
Some games actually had you holding the middle and left sticks (Wetrix I think?).
Also the D-pad or L button were used to taunt in Smash Bros.
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth
It’s better than the current factor for switching between d-pad and joystick exclusive games.
I disagree, but I could see it being difficult for some folks with thumb problems.
I had this cool PS2 controller that let you swap the positions of the d pad, analog sticks, and buttons. So you could make it like the Xbox layout, left analog on top left and dpad on bottom left. It’d be nice if more stuff like that was a thing. Though I think most consoles have pretty good accessibility settings now and let you do stuff like that (though not as dramatic as moving hardware of course). It could even adjust the tension in the sticks by twisting em.
