The N64 Controller Sucks And I Do Not Want To Use It Again

A Nintendo 64 controller.

Picture: Nintendo

1 of Nintendo’s cuter tiny announcements all through the newest Direct was that, with N64 game titles coming shortly to the program, the organization will also commence marketing recreations of the console’s controller for you to participate in them on.

It is amusing, how when it comes to Nintendo how so several persons are so eager to allow things slide. What may well seem to be unwell-recommended coming from yet another enterprise is high-quality when it’s Nintendo, simply because then it is nostalgic. If Sony tried re-releasing the original pre-DualShock PlayStation controller we would convey to them to go to hell for the reason that it was unpleasant and sucked (and most people did by disregarding the PlayStation Common), but when Nintendo does this stuff it’s superb because people just feel much better about it in their hearts.

I am here to remind you nowadays to by no means listen to your coronary heart. Your heart is mistaken. Your coronary heart looks at an N64 controller and remembers sitting close to a CRT Tv with friends participating in Smash or Mario Kart, or hunched about in the dim grinding your way via Ocarina of Time. It’s a package deal deal, all all those fond recollections and very good instances, and the N64 controller is doing extremely well sneaking its way in there along with timeless recreation style, unforgettable startup appears and outdated friendships.

Due to the fact when you different the controller from the recollections, or God forbid check out and use a person now, you remember: it is lousy! All the things about it is terrible! It’s a dumb shape, it’s deeply awkward to hold when obtaining to use the analogue controller, the bumpers were being terrible and the analogue controller felt like shit to go.

It was also notoriously vulnerable to failure, one thing you’d think would be tackled in this remake, but specified Nintendo’s several years-long struggles with Joy-Con drift, probably not!

Indeed the N64 controller could be so physically agonizing to use in some situations that in 2002 the organization was forced to “offer gloves to avoid joystick injuries” after the New York Lawyer General’s office complained on behalf of mom and dad, whose kids had “endured cuts, punctures, blisters and friction burns on their hands” whilst actively playing Mario Get together.

The Nintendo 64 controller was not a fantastic controller. The Nintendo 64 was a profitable console in spite of its controller. There’s a rationale no other console before or because has applied a structure just about anything like this: mainly because it’s a terrible format. And it is not like the layout was even important for any of its most effective online games to glow.

There’s not a single game from the N64’s library that does not participate in greater with a far more modern controller even the GameCube’s pad, which carried in excess of some of the N64’s quirks (like the octagonal guidebook for the adhere housing and an off-kilter button structure), was a vastly excellent way to perform everything from Smash to Zelda.

I’m not declaring you have to throw out your fond memories of the N64 period, or even of utilizing this controller at the time. The console was what it was, warts and all, and if you experienced enjoyable with it in 1998, then good! That’s specifically why Nintendo retains bringing these 90s games back, since even 20+ years on, even 3-4 ports later, people today even now can not get sufficient of them.

But if you believe I’m going to shell out money on a new N64 controller in 2024, and invite all that suffering again into my lifestyle, you are out of your brain, Nintendo.