Nintendo 64 controller
The Nintendo 64 controller is the standard game controller for the Nintendo 64 home console. Manufactured and released by Nintendo, it debuted alongside the console in Japan on June 23, 1996, followed by North America on September 29, 1996, and Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo controller, it features an "M"-shaped design, ten buttons, a "control stick",, a D-pad, and a rear port for connecting accessories.
Design
The controller was designed by Nintendo R&D3, under direction to try new ideas that would break from typical game controllers. With original visual designs having been mocked up in clay form, and extensive test group studies being performed before and during the design phase, the Nintendo 64's controller design was eventually solidified in tandem with that of Shigeru Miyamoto's gameplay mechanics in Super Mario 64. Though Miyamoto tested the controller while developing Super Mario 64, the controller was not designed around the game, while it did influence its mechanics like movement.Nintendo of America's head designer, Lance Barr, said that the design studies revealed that "most games use a few buttons for most of the main controls, such as jumping and shooting, or accelerating and braking. That's why the A and B Buttons are placed for easiest access on the new controller and why they are larger than the other buttons. They're the buttons that get high traffic."
The controller has four "C-buttons" on the top, which were originally intended to control the camera in three-dimensional game environments. Because the pad only contains three other face buttons, the C-buttons may be assigned to alternate functions. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, three of the C-buttons can be assigned to secondary items, the upper C-button is used to call Navi for assistance, and the Z-trigger is used to lock focus onto enemies and center the camera behind the player.
Control stick
The Nintendo 64 controller was among the first to feature a "control stick" as a central component, intended to provide the user with a wider range of functions such as mobility and camera control. Unlike a D-pad, which detect only 8 directions, this stick could register 360 degrees of movement, allowing for more precise control in games.While joysticks had long been used in gaming—appearing in the Atari 5200, Sega's arcade systems and Mission Stick for the Saturn, and Sony's PlayStation Analog Joystick —the Nintendo 64 distinguished itself by using a thumb-operated stick. Previously, the only console accessory to feature a thumbstick was the Mega Drive's XE-1 AP, a third-party device released by Dempa in 1989. The Nintendo 64 controller was released contemporaneously with Sega's 3D Pad for their Saturn system, and was followed during the fifth generation of video game consoles by Sony's Dual Analog and DualShock controllers for the PlayStation.
Though functionally similar to an analog stick, the "control stick" is digital. It operates like a ball mouse, turning a chopper wheel wheel that interrupts a light beam detected by a photodiode. Its precision makes it effectively equivalent to a true analog stick. Since it registers only relative movement, the system assumes the stick is centered at startup. If misaligned, recalibration can be performed by pressing the L and R shoulder buttons along with the Start button or by restarting the console with the stick properly centered.
Hand positioning
The controller was designed to be held in three different positions. First, it can be held by the two outer grips, allowing use of the D-pad, right-hand face buttons and the "L" and "R" shoulder buttons. This style was intended to optimize play in 2D games by emulating the setup on the Super NES controller. It can be also held by the center and right-hand grip, allowing the use of the single control stick, the right hand-buttons, the "R" shoulder button, and the Z trigger on the rear. This style was intended for 3D games. Finally, the controller can be held by the center and left-hand grip, allowing for a combination of the D-pad, L shoulder, analog stick, and Z trigger, as was implemented in GoldenEye 007.In some games such as Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the control stick and directional pad are interchangeable. Very few games use the directional pad exclusively, such as Tetrisphere, Mischief Makers and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Additionally, though the controller was not designed with this setup in mind, one controller can be held in each hand with a thumb on each analog stick and index fingers on the Z trigger. This setup allows dual-analog control on some first-person shooters such as Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark. One game, Robotron 64, allows one player to use two controllers to control an avatar. This way, the game plays like its predecessor, Robotron 2084.
This design is controversial, as by its nature it generally prevents the use of all of its features with the player's hands in any one position; the D-pad, L-shoulder, analog stick and Z-trigger cannot, generally, all be used at the same time as it typically requires the player to switch hand positions, taking the hands off of the key directional controls. Some, though, realized they can hold the controller with the outer grips and use their index fingers for the R and L triggers, middle fingers for the Z-trigger, right thumb for the right-hand buttons, and left thumb for the D-pad and analog stick, without changing hand positions.
When Sony released its Dual Analog and DualShock controllers for the competing PlayStation, it retained the original controllers' two-handled ergonomics, placing the analog sticks below and inside the primary D-pad and face buttons, allowing the player to quickly switch from the D-pad and face buttons to the analog sticks without letting go of the controller. Nintendo would largely follow suit with the stock controller for its GameCube console, but swapped the positions of the analog stick and D-pad. Such a layout would become dominant in gamepad design, as by that time the left analog stick had become universally accepted as the primary movement control on 3D games across all consoles.