The second generation of video game consoles was dominated by the Atari 2600, which gave us a joystick with a single button. Other systems of the day included ColecoVision and the Emerson Arcadia, both of which had numbered button-pads that were as functional as they were not-awkward. That is to say, not very. Other early systems from Magnavox and Sega--not to be outdone--used and entire keyboard in conjunction with a joystick. These were simpler times, when Atari's came with wood paneling. Meanwhile, a fledgling company called Nintendo released a line of single-game hand-held LCD games under the somewhat misleading name "Game & Watch" (originally designed to be a game that you wore on your wrist that also told time... not that anyone could see anything on those itty-bitty screens) using such complicated controls as "left" and "right".
But it was in 1983, after the Video Game Crash of '83, that console systems began to resemble what we think of today with the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES controller had a directional pad with up, down, left, and right. A button labeled "start" that was used for pausing and menu selections, a button labeled "select" that might as well not have existed, and two buttons labeled, from left-to-right "B" and "A". This button-dislyxia will plague Nintendo for years. The Sega Master System and Atari 7800 were on the market as well, but no one cared.
This 3rd generation of video game consoles also saw the widespread acceptance of gimmicky peripherals. R.O.B., the Light Zapper, the Power Glove, the NES Advantage (with it's joystick, rapid toggles, and oddly-slanted buttons), hell, the Japanese version even had a microphone built into controller-2.
The foundations were laid for the modern controller, but it was the 4th generation, the 16-bit era, that truly saw the genius of Nintendo. They realized that what people really needed were more buttons. The oddly-spelled Turbo-Grafx 16 was the first out, and it used the basic Nintendo 8-bit controller layout. Sega had the foresight to add another button, as well as a "Start" to the controller for it's new Genesis console. Neo-Geo added a fourth button, although oddly decided to put them all in a row rather than something that might be, you know, playable. But Nintendo went all out for the Super NES. In addition to the bass-ackwards A-B buttons, it added reversed X and Y buttons in a diamond configuration that mirrored the directional pad and--and--left and right shoulder buttons conveniently labeled "L" and "R". They were geniuses of controller design.
Who then drank the Kool-Aid. Gen 5 is where the road narrows. No one cares about the Amiga, 3DO, Jaguar, or Saturn (Sega having pissed off its fan base with meaningless add-ons like the 32x or the Sega CD rather than continuing to develop games for it's still-popular Genesis). In this game, there were only two players: Sony and Nintendo. Sony's PlayStation was a revolution, it's 32-bit processor, it's crisp (if boxy) graphics, it's disc system that allowed for multiple discs (and ease of piracy). It's external save cards. Everything about it was a breath of fresh air, except the controller, which was a button-for-button copy of the SNES pad. Okay, they changed the names of the A, B, X, and Y buttons and replaced them with shapes. But they really shouldn't have. You can't type a shape. Some are polysyllabic, so you can't internalize them as easily (seriously, say it with me: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, triangle, circle... shit). And because they're obsessed with backwards compatibility, they haven't bothered to remove this cumbersome nomenclature.
For all the flaws with the Nintendo 64's controller, it did introduce the analog stick and the rumble pack, which would not be available on the PSX until... well... they built controllers that did that. The 64 controller still had the D-pad and left shoulder button, but the analog stick had rendered that entire wing of the controller vestigile. The "select" button was gone, but under the analog stick was a trigger-style button arbitrarily called "Z". I say "arbitrarily" because X and Y had been removed, replaced with four buttons, all called "C". The orientation of A and B had been switched from slanting up to slanting down (to make room for the C buttons), meaning that if you had some way to play a SNES game on a 64, the X would now be C-left, Y would correspond to B, B would correspond to A, and A would correspond to C-down. So there was a learning curve to it, but it worked, you got used to it, and you remembered to dust off the D-pad from time to time and/or replace the whole damn thing when the stick wore out. But surely they'd do be better with the next generation controller, right?
Um, no. As far as I'm concerned, the GC controller is broken. It tried to get back to basics, but it just failed so stupidly. The analog stick and D-pad were swapped, well, that makes sense. The C buttons had been made into a second analog stick, placed in a secondary position on the right side--whatever, it works. And that's where things stop working. The thing about the diamond configuration on the SNES, or the PSX, is that you can actually get to the buttons and, more important, you can press more than one at a time without difficulty. So what does Nintendo do? They make a big ol' A button and have the others orbit it like freaking satellites. The B button is easy enough to find, but X and Y, in addition to being weirdly shaped (and small, and easy-to-miss), are the same color--which wouldn't be a problem except that they aren't labeled in a way that can be read quickly. All the buttons have their labels depressed into the plastic, rather than painted on in a contrasting color. The L and R buttons are curved, which means they take more effort (and time) to press, and they're dual-sensor, so sometimes they mean different things depending on how far you depress them. Then there's the inexplicable Z button tacked on there next to the R.
At least Sony had the good sense to not try and fix what wasn't broken. The PS2 controller is remarkably similar to that of it's predecessor, only with two analog sticks and two more shoulder buttons. Long live SNES controls! New-comer Xbox had a controller that was similar but with the left analog stick swapped with the D-pad, trigger-style shoulder buttons, A, B, X, and Y (in alphabetical order, no less) and also a black and white button for... the hell of it. Actually quite usable, the thing would have been perfect if it weren't the size of a small Buick. Lastly, there was the Dreamcast, Sega's final console, whose controller had a worst-of-both-worlds approach, having fewer buttons and being even larger.
So then came gen-7. Xbox dropped the black and white buttons, replacing them with shoulder "bumpers" and making possibly the best controller ever. The PS3 is the PS2 without a cable. So what foulness does Nintendo have cooked up?
The Wiimote. It has a D-pad where you can't reach it quickly, an A button under your thumb, a trigger-style B button, +, -, and "house" buttons, and 1 and 2 buttons under your palm. You can connect it to various peripherals, but most games require the nunchuck, which has an analog stick plus C and Z. Although you can also connect a "classic" controller, which is a SNES controller with 2 analog sticks.
That said, the Wiimote is one of the most sophisticated input devices ever created. It reads infrared, has accelerometers to track movement. But, really, how do we know that motion control and infrared targeting are the future of video games?
Because Sony copied it.
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