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Soundwave on 09 February 2017
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Hynad said:
Soundwave said:

Did you seriously even use the term "d-pad" in the 80s? I never really heard that used much until really the SNES came around. It was just "Nintendo controller". We didn't care about any of that shit, we just played the games and the games were what was important. 

But it was never "ah man, you have to buy a NES because it has a d-pad!". Lol. You had to have a NES because it had Ninja Turtles and Mario and Mike Tyson and Contra and Ghouls N' Ghosts, etc. etc. etc.

I also had one of these bad boys, so it's not like the joystick was completely forgotten. 

The biggest difference in the NES to me and to many people I think wasn't really even the controller. It was that you were going from this shit:

To NES games that had real scrolling environments and real music (not just blips and bleeps) and even stories in some cases was monumentally earth shattering.

The d-pad itself though ... I mean by the late 80s everything had some variant of a d-pad on it, Sega had a direction pad, even those cheap Tiger toys, any kid who grew up in the 80s will likely remember these: 

There's a lot of 20-something (or even teenager) Nintendo fans who think they know what it was like in the NES era ... not saying you, but a lot of these people don't have a freaking clue, lol. The 80s/early 90s Nintendo era was very different. Very, very different from today. 

Man, you make the case for me. You're saying it yourself. Nintendo brought forth the D-Pad and everything that came after adopted it.

It's like you don't even follow your own arguments anymore. xD

What I'm saying is the d-pad itself wasn't what drove the NES or what made it popular. The N64 analog stick and rumble pak were copied too, that doesn't mean the N64 was the most successful system. 

The NES was certainly the PS4 of its day, moreso actually, it's dominance was absolute, Sega could've put two d-pad on their controller with a blow up titty in the middle and they still would not have been able to compete with Nintendo of that time. Why? Because they didn't have any of the big games of the day. 

Ninja Turtles, Contra, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Megaman, these were the CODs, Destinys, GTAs, of their day. And you had to buy a Nintendo to play them. 

And that's not because of controller. Sega's controller could do all the same things Nintendo's pad could do. It's because Hiroshi Yamauchi was a brilliant ruthless son of a bitch and came up with a lockout chip concept that meant all third party support was basically Nintendo exclusive. 

That's why we laughed at the kid on our block who got stuck with the Sega Master System. Not because his system didn't have a magical d-pad on it. It's because he'd have to come over to our house to play Megaman 2 or Ghouls N' Ghosts or Metal Gear or Bayou Billy or Bubble Bobble or Baseball Stars or Super C or some 4-player Superspike V-Ball. Even though I had to admit Alex Kidd was pretty cool.