By [ad_1]
So many controllers across different video game companies owe themselves to Nintendo, who revolutionized controller designs as we know them.
The image of the modern video game controller is instantly familiar even to people who don’t play video games, with even the most casual of observers recognizing the cross-shaped directional pad and four face buttons of various colors and icons. Yet controllers didn’t always feature this user-friendly, easy-to-learn control scheme, with Nintendo’s influence being a significant factor in how controllers are today. When Nintendo introduced the NES, its new controller featured a revolutionary cross-shaped directional pad and two buttons. It was a simple design that was shockingly versatile for a great variety of games. Regardless of what type of game it was, the NES controller provided satisfactory performance all around.
This controller design was so successful that other companies started copying its general layout. Meanwhile, Nintendo understood that the added graphical and technical capabilities of 16-bit gaming meant it had to increase controller functionality without compromising familiarity and accessibility. In designing the Super Nintendo controller, Nintendo not only succeeded in its goal but unknowingly created what all modern controllers would model themselves after.
Featuring four face buttons and two shoulder buttons, the Super Nintendo controller stepped up its game to match the increasing complexities of its software library. It allowed for arcade fighting games like Street Fighter to be viably ported. For other games, it reduced the need for button combos, such as secondary attacks in Castlevania to use a shoulder button instead of up+B. Combined with rounded grips for comfort, Nintendo made the perfect controller for its second console generation and laid the template for gaming companies to follow, with the most notable mimicry coming from Sony’s own.
The PlayStation started its life as a collaboration between Nintendo and Sony to make a disc add-on for the Super Nintendo similar to the Sega CD. When the deal fell through, Sony decided to make its own video game console, including several aspects of the original Nintendo prototype into the design. Nowhere is the Nintendo influence more evident than in the design of the console’s controller, looking all too familiar to players even back then.
Many have noted that the PlayStation controller strongly resembles the SNES controller in layout, especially the first generation model with its lack of control sticks. The only addition is foregrips and extra shoulder buttons. It features a segmented directional pad instead of a solid cross shape and four buttons, which use geometric shapes instead of letters. This was an inspired choice; in Japan, “circle” meant to select and “cross” meant to cancel, much like how “B” and “A” functioned on a SNES controller. However, many games localized to the US had the “cross” button as the main selection button, leading to another re-booted layout on a rival console’s controller: the Xbox’s.
Microsoft’s Xbox controller clearly takes itself after the PlayStation DualShock controller upgrade with its dual analog stick placement and thick grips but borrows a little extra from Nintendo once more with face buttons that are both colored and lettered. Because many players used the “cross” button on the PlayStation so regularly, Microsoft seemed to anticipate this by making the bottom face button the A button and a default selection button as it was in many Nintendo games. Since then, the PlayStation and Xbox controllers have remained functionally identical to one another with similar features, with no significant revolutions to warrant a substantial change in the overall design, and it’s all thanks to Nintendo revolutionizing controllers in the first place.
About The Author
[ad_2]
