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The first time I picked it up my hands were already large enough that it just felt normal to have each hand on the outer grips. I’ve been called a freak. Feared by children and scorned by adults. I was cast out of my village. Given no quarter.
It’s been a lonely life, but I yam what I yam.
Fun Fact: Holding it that way makes it a lot easier to break the joystick since you’re putting force on it from an angle. As an adult I’ve had to order after market joysticks with thicker sticks to replace the ones I broke as a kid. They’re actually much better with way smoother movement.
Should be 3 mouths.
It was designed at a transition point between joysticks and the D-pad. Your right hand goes on the right prong for the A, B, and C buttons. Your left hand should be on the center prong when using a game designed for the joystick, or on the left prong when using a game designed for the D-pad. It’s not the most elegant design, but it’s really not that hard to figure out.
This is why hiring the “why not both” girl as lead hardware designer is not always the best strategy
I mean, at the time it was designed, “both,” pretty much was the right choice. Without the D-pad a lot of the titles they could reliably develop, like fighting or puzzle games, would have been incredibly difficult to get working well, but without the joystick, they couldn’t launch with titles like Mario 64. It’s easy to look at the PS1 Duelshock controller and assume they were idiots, but original PS1 controller only had a D-pad. The N64 beat the PS1 to the joystick by two years, and while it was much derpier than the Playstation’s solution, it was integrated from day one.
Idk if both was the “right” choice, but given the virtual boy was a ~year prior… there is definitely wisdom in playing things a little more cautious, which is what I would say the N64 controller represents: a justified fear to commit to the analog stick and remove the D-pad.
Or you’re like me and you put your hand on the left pron and stretch your thumb onto the joystick anyway. Middle prong be damned.
How the hell did you use the Z-trigger?
Middle finger stretched to it.
I apparently have large hands.
LOL, yeah, you’d kinda have to.
Yup. Middle finger. It’s a large hand person thing.
It’s honestly baffling people still riff on this. Anyone that’s held the controller for 2 seconds understands it.
It’s gotta be Zoomers looking at it with no frame of reference. Anyone who played this at the time would have recognized the layout here; they were taking the SNES controller, adding an extra set of buttons to be more in line with the 6 button layout popularized by Sega, and then sticking a joystick in the middle. Assigning the c-buttons as directional was actually pretty insightful. They work for camera controls on stuff like Mario 64, but they also function as a top-row/bottom-row for strong-attack/light-attack on D-pad fighting games like Mortal Kombat.
You’re right it’s just the system had very few games where the d pad was the obvious primary control device.
What everyone here is really missing is the ahead of its time Golden eye 2 controller two stick setup. They knew where things were going the controller was just a little too soon.
Then there was Turok where the movement forward/back and strafe left/right was on the C-Buttons…
Still beats flying
Yeah its more awkward when your copilot is watching you deep throat the throttle.
Better have a long tongue to reach the “Z” button with.
Regular length tongue is fine. It’s just not inserted all the way in the picture.
Understood. My experience deepthroating N64 controllers is …uh… limited.
Yoshis tongue was based on the lead designers
mouthanusI’ve just been stabilizing it in my bellybutton. I need to work on my flexibility.
Wtf is that controller? Some kind of new-fangled wireless abomination? That’s not original hardware. And, since it is new, why did they put no effort into fixing the joystick? You’re just going to get a floppy dick stick in a few years with it anyway.
I still don’t get how they ever approved this design.
It’s better than the current factor for switching between d-pad and joystick exclusive games.
I disagree, but I could see it being difficult for some folks with thumb problems.
I had this cool PS2 controller that let you swap the positions of the d pad, analog sticks, and buttons. So you could make it like the Xbox layout, left analog on top left and dpad on bottom left. It’d be nice if more stuff like that was a thing. Though I think most consoles have pretty good accessibility settings now and let you do stuff like that (though not as dramatic as moving hardware of course). It could even adjust the tension in the sticks by twisting em.
Maybe this controller was meant for girls.
Worst controller design of all time.
