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room414 on 21 July 2013
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MohammadBadir said:
room414 said:
rakugakist said:
Nintendo is the innovative company when it comes to controllers. D-pads, Shoulder buttons, mainstream analog on a console, wireless that doesn't suck (wave bird), and motion controls. Love or hate them, they innovate.


None of those things are nintendo innovations. Nintendo is good at popularizing other people's ideas. 


D-pad is indeed  a Nintendo invention, Nintendo were the first to put the ABXY buttons, they made the analog Stick mainstream, they created the SNES shoulder buttons, and put rumble into their controllers, and introduced Motion and Touch Screens to the mass audience.

The first d-pads i'm aware of were for the Cosmic Hunter Microvision handheld released in '81 and on the atari cosmos (http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/cosmos/cosmos.html ) exhibited at the 1981 New York Toy Fair. One year later nintendo comes out with their first d-pad on a game & watch handheld after about 15 which didn't have one. 

abxy buttons i'll give you. 

There were many analog sticks before nintendo used one. First dedicated thumbstick was on the Philips cd-i controller. Nintendo did popularize it.

From that chart you posted you can see a few controllers with shoulder buttons. I guess nintendo gets credit for their particular placement. 

Interesting story behind rumble which was first seen in arcades on The Fonz (1976). The Force Fx (http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/reviews/chforcefx.htm ) was the first controller with rumble released in march '97. Nintendo released their rumble pack one month later and sony released their dualshock that same year but outdoing nintendo by having it integrated into the controller and with two different types of rumble motors. It took Nintendo 4 years after Sony to release a controller with built-in rumble. Yet nintendo are somehow the innovaters?

Motion control: Xavix released over 2 years prior to the wii. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH9u0eKgytc

Touch screens: Vectrex and PalmPilot, long before the DS. 

Anything else? My favorite is light guns which have been around since the 1930's with, you guessed it, duck hunt games. lol