A number of things Nintendo was not actually thr first to invent it, or even the first to bring it to gaming, but Nintendo just did it properly the first time.
There was a controller that had an analogue stick before the N64 one, I am not certain if it was full analogue (ie both direction AND pressure) but it was there first.
I think the most obvious thing though is the determination of Sony to 1-up Nintendo through the N64 era.
PS1 comes out with a controller that is just a SNES with handles and 2 extra shoulder buttons.
N64 comes out with it's analogue stick.
Sony put 2 analogue sticks in to make the dual-analog controller.
N64 adds the rumble pack.
Sony adds a rumble feature into each of the handles and makes the dual-shock.
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It was a very "you have 1, but now we have 2" thing.
I think Sony may have been the first for memory cards... but then that was out of necessity due to the imposibility of storage on CD.... unless I am mistaken and there were previous memory cards?
