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thismeintiel on 26 December 2014
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archer9234 said:
thismeintiel said:

The N64 controller is the worst designed controller of all time. I don't understand how Nintendo went from the great SNES controller, to one where you can never reach all the buttons unless you completely reposition your hand to another grip. Most games that used the analog stick could not have it where you used the D-Pad and L shoulder button. Thankfully, Sony came along and showed us how an analog controller should be.

I think if you took the iQue controller layout, but replaced the D-pad with a better one, it would have been a good controller for the N64. It looks like they took queues from the Saturn (analog)/Dreamcast controller, which were pretty good controllers.

I can't recall a game on the N64 that mad you move your hand away from one postion. Ocarina only uses the L button for the vertical strike, Menu scrolling, and a note for the Ocarina. Which isn't used in the songs. Just for goofing off. Can you list a game that made you switch around? I keep seeing people say they went nuts with the controller. And I never ran into this issue once. Granted I only have 10 N64 games. I'm curious.

I recall Hexen having some crappy control workarounds due to not having quick access to the left 5 buttons when using the analog stick.  Of course, the point is that the games had to just ignore buttons because of the controller design.  This, and the fact that you have a 3 handled controller while humans have 2 hands, should have tipped Nintendo off to the fact that they were making a crappy controller.  Fortunately, Nintendo came to their senses and adopted something more similar to the DS for the Gamecube.

amp316 said:
I just wanted to point out that all of the "The N64 controller is the worst controller of all time!" comments are hilarious. You'd swear that the analog stick didn't work and was a fad.

Ironically, the N64's analog stick usually did stop working after awhile.  Much quicker than the DS's.  This is why companies, including Nintendo, abandoned the single analog stick, as well as the tech Nintendo used to make it work, and started using the DA/DS controller and its potentiometer tech, with built in rumble, as inspiration.