Official USB GameCube controller adapter for Wii U

[MayImilae]

Shonumi Wrote:Honestly, I don't see how. I think we would have been fine if it hadn't come along. If it wouldn't have been Nintendo, it would just have been someone else, given time. If anything, people looked at the N64 controller and saw how not to design a decent controller for 3D games.

Uh no. Sure it looks obvious to us looking back, but at the time NO ONE knew how to make this work. Hence all the crazy weird things trying to sort out how to do it. If it hadn't been for the N64, at the very least, we wouldn't have had proper 3D controls till the 6th gen (gamecube), and that would have dramatically altered the 5th gen itself, placing more emphasis on 2D or 2.5D gameplay, since they could do that. Remember, these decisions were being made in 1995 and had to last till 2001. Six years. If someone didn't figure out 3D controllers we'd have had 6 years of this crap before they had a chance to try again. The N64 controller was a big freakin deal, and gaming would have been changed a ton if it didn't happen.

Shonumi Wrote:If the ill-fated Saturn had switched to analog joystick input, it would have been where the N64 controller stands.

You mean like this?



Study more dude. Game console evolution is fascinating. You'd be amazed how much THAT controller influences modern designs. Thanks to the cooperation between MS and Dreamcast, the sega design lives on, which in turned influence Nintendo designs. It literally went like this.

Saturn 3D > Dreamcast > Xbox duke > Xbox Slim > 360 > Wii U Pro Controller

What was once a giant attempt to rip off the N64 controller has now spun full circle into the pro controller for nintendo. Fascinating how that works eh?

Shonumi Wrote:Yes, I would have loved the N64 to have had something comparable to the Wii's Classic controller. You can add joysticks without resorting to bizarre controller designs.

RachelB Wrote:

MaJoR Wrote:Oh come on. People give way too much hate on the N64 controller. The only mistake Nintendo made was the 3 prong design

That is a ridiculously huge mistake though. It makes it uncomfortable, and half of the controller is essentially unusable.

Why do you people hate the 3 grip design? Sure it looks odd, but who cares? All you have to do is not look at it, and you can forget it isn't 2 grip. That's it. Anyone who complains about it being nonfunctional doesn't know what they are talking about. It was perfectly fine. Who cares if "half" the controller is not usable. It doesn't matter what buttons are used, what matters is does it work or doesn't it. Z trigger and joystick works exactly the same as L trigger and dpad, and there's no ergonomic disadvantage. There is nothing functionally wrong with the 3 grip design.

That said, the 3 grip idea was a mistake. It originated because Nintendo was skittish about Miyamoto's crazy new joystick and his 3D game plans, so they wanted a fallback in case it didn't work and everyone went back to making SNES style games. Yes, this was a legit worry back then, as weird as that sounds today. The 3 grip design was that paranoia personified into the controller. If it didn't work out, which they were pretty sure was likely, then you could just play it like an SNES pad and forget the joystick was even there.

Of course that created a bunch of kids who held it like an SNES pad and got frustrated in walmart because they couldn't figure out how to make Mario move. Plus people see the size of the controller and scream "HUGE FAT OMG" instead of trying it on and realizing that the functional area is small, and it's only that big because of the gap required to fit your hands times 3 grips. The decision was absolutely and totally dumb. What they should have done was trust in the joystick but keep the dpad around, in a design that was, well, like a gamecube controller! Or a classic controller pro! But that's us in our 8th gen world talking about 5th gen design considerations. They didn't know what we know. And so the mistake happened. Instead of saying the obvious things of what we would do with all our superior 8th gen knowledge, what we should be doing is analyzing what they did and why they did it.

Shonumi Wrote:Growing pains shouldn't make it into production, ideally. That's what QA testing and getting early opinions is all about.

The joystick problem was not something that QA could discover. It requires years of friction. I suppose a machine could have worn it down over many months, but sometimes you just have to get it out into the wild before problems appear. That said, Nintendo did create a superior plastic version for the atomic controller set, which improve this issue greatly. But meh, damage done by that point. Plus Nintendo themselves weren't entirely enthusiastic about the joystick thing. The dpad was there invention, patented, that defined them as a video game company. To say they were hesitant to abandon it as their primary control method is an understatement.

As for the three grip element, the focus testing would have revealed the confusion. But they were so worried about the joystick failing.... I'm not sure they would care, and would view the potential advantages as better than the confusion. Hell, if it flopped, then they'd want people to ignore the center grip, which is what they ended up doing! There are lots and lots of design reasons for the mistakes and successes of the N64 controller. That's why I love it so much. It's a flawed yet revolutionary work of design. Lots of juicy stuff.

Shonumi Wrote:They could have gone for a totally different approach and have a controller (bigger and wider of course) that was similar to the GBA. I get that it needed batteries, but they could have designed a controller that did not rely on prongs. I mean, just looking at the controller, I can't see how lopping the prongs off (and rounding the bottom portion out like an SNES controller) would have adversely affected gameplay. At the very least, the prongs were unnecessarily elongated.

Uh.... did you see the size of that battery pack?



It holds six AA batteries. There is absolutely no way that gamepad was going to exist without grips. The controller is UGLY, sure, but it's job is not to be pretty: it's supposed to be a controller. As a controller, it had good ergonomics and was the first symmetrical controller design ever made (that didn't have a large centered joystick or wheel anyway). Eh, I guess there's the Atari Lynx, but the less said about that, the better. Anyway, the Virtual Boy controller is quirky and fascinating! And it's functional. Who cares what it looks like?

As for the grips... look carefully. The controller is deceptively small. Those dpads are TINY. Like GBA tiny.



The grips fill his hands just fine, without ever leaving his palms or reaching his wrists. Still ugly though.