Page 8 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #40 FREE Edition

Some years later, the d-pad made its way to the NES platform, making that controller, along with the original Famicom on which the NES was based, the first to feature one.
Competition for living room dominance grew hotter as the ‘80s continued. In 1988, Sega’s Mega Drive iterated on the now-standard rectangular controller with its curved, boomerang-style pad. It one-upped the NES by utilizing three main buttons instead of
two, all arranged in a row; this style was superseded a few years later when Sega rolled out a six- button controller that was ideal for fighting games like Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition. However, perhaps the most unique element of the controller’s design was, once again, its directional pad. Plastic molding around the four main directional buttons made its eight- way directional input more obvious. In some games, you could even press on the molding as a shortcut between inputs - instead of down- forward-A to blast opponents with ice as Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat, just hold down-forward on the connective tissue and press the A button.
If the NES controller was futuristic but un-thumb-fortable after long sessions, the Super Nintendo’s gamepad was a case study in elegance and comfort, and one that endures today. It included four face buttons and two shoulder buttons to keep up with the increasing complexity of game design: Unlike playing on Genesis, you wouldn’t need to invest in a separate six- button peripheral to enjoy games like Street Fighter II. It also reduced
the need to press multiple buttons at once. Where you had to hold up and
hit B to use consumable items in Castlevania, Super Castlevania mapped secondary weapons such as the axe and cross- shaped boomerang to a shoulder button. In Super Mario World, holding L or R panned the camera in
that direction; the A button’s spinning jump attack could break through bricks with Mario’s feet, while pressing B unleashed his standard fist- pumping jump.
The dog-bone-style shape combined with its thin
yet solid build fit easily in
your hands. Unlike the NES console, this controller’s
design didn’t fade away with
its platform. Playstation, PC gamepads, Microsoft’s second iteration of the original Xbox ‘pad - countless controllers that followed emulated the shape, button layout, and solid feel of the Super NES controller.
While Sony took cues from Nintendo when it designed the original Playstation controller, there were a few differences to set them apart. The first and most obvious difference were plastic handles, or grips, extending from either side, giving the pads of your hands
a natural resting place. Second
was its directional pad. Instead
of the solid cross seen on the NES and Super NES gamepads, Sony designed the Playstation’s d-pad
in segments. This could make
input more precise, although some players complained about comfort after hours pressing the hard plastic of separate segments. Third, Sony’s gamepad had four shoulder buttons to the SNES’s two. Last, Sony tossed aside the letter-marked buttons used by competitors Sega and Nintendo in favor of shapes. The idea in Japan, the PS1’s native country, was that circle stood for confirm and X meant cancel. That was convenient: Super Nintendo
fans used to pressing the A button in the lower-right quadrant of
that controller found circle easily. The functionality of X and O were reversed in the United States, however, except in rare cases such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on the PS2.
In 1996, Nintendo revolutionized controllers again with the release
of the Nintendo 64. Featuring
three grips, the Big N’s traditional cross-shaped d-pad, two shoulder buttons, and six face buttons, the N64 controller seemed like more of the same on the surface. Then you laid eyes on the stick. Like a pint- sized joystick, the analog stick was another first for Nintendo, and for game controllers. Designed for full 360-degree rotation, developers introduced use cases for different types of movement. For instance, applying slight pressure to the stick in any direction causes Mario to tiptoe in Super Mario 64, a crucial tactic to slip by sleeping foes. Mario’s debut 3D entry and the
N64 were developed in tandem. “The first time Miyamoto played with the controller, because he’s working most of the time on Mario
8
OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #40