"Speedrunners hate this one trick"
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Honestly, this picture is close to accurate if you were trying to input the code for the debug menu in Shadows of The Empire.
The purple version was the best. Mine from 1999 has had the most use and still works the best. I've bought new aftermarket controllers but none stand up to the old translucent purple.
Whatever floats your goat
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.
It was weird going back to Goldeneye with the N64 controller for a second but then you realize “oh, just hold the center nub with your right hand and it feels like any twin stick shooter today”
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark both actually have a set of control schemas...
Where you play with two of these, at the same time.
As well as a number of different one handed configurations, that essentially make it possible to play those games with hands on the left and right prongs, left and center, or right and center.
You may or may not find some of them wonky, but ... yeah, it was a perhaps needlessly versatile design, though also very innovative, though also a bit weird.
I'm pretty sure it was literally the first home game console controller with an analog stick, an actual true analog stick, not counting joysticks with huge bases and a button or two.
This is also the same era where the early Mario party games had minigames where you were supposed to spin thr control stick in a circle very fast.
So uh, beyond that being terrible for the controller...
A good number of kids figured out that you can just grip the center prong and then palm the stick, move it much much faster... but also tearing through your own hand and giving you blisters.
So Nintendo stopped putting those kinds of minigames in Mario Party, and basically issued a health advisory telling people not to do that.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/nintendo-offers-glove-to-prevent-joystick-injuries/
... Apparently they actually got sued.
... and offered to give the injured parties... gloves.
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.
It's not just Zoomers, I grew up when the big systems were PSX and N64. I thought it then, and it still strikes me as valid, that controller looks as though it were designed by some entity entirely unfamiliar with human anatomy. The fact that you could figure out what they intended is ultimately irrelevant as to whether or not it was a good design. The dual shock came out a year after the N64, with a much more comfortable to use anh intuitive design, and I think it's telling that pretty much every major console since has used a controller that takes far more after the Dual Shock design in terms of placement and orientation of the joysticks in respect to other buttons.
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.
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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.
The N64 beat the PS1 to the joystick by two years, a
It came out about a year and half after the N64. The N64 June 23rd 1996, and all other markets saw a later release. The first DualShock was released in November 1997. and I would say the extra time to reflect and refine the design was well worth it, and something Nintendo should have considered as well.
Being first to the market with a new concept isn't always great if it means you rush a subpar product out the door to try and beat the competition to it.
On today's standard controller layout, it's easy to use both D-Pad and left Joystick without a third grip. I don't see how that wouldn't have been possible in 1996?
It wasn't impossible, it just hadn't been done yet. 3D games were a new concept, and no one was really sure how to implement them. A joystick made the most sense for moving a character through a 3D world, but the D-pad would work better for pretty much every game that had been developed up until that point. The Sega Saturn and the Playstation both prioritized the D-pad; they both launched with D-pad controllers (the Saturn had a joystick-optional controller, but it's games could be played with the D-pad). The drawback to their designs was camera controls; their games either needed a fixed camera (like Crash Bandicoot) or camera switching (like Laura Croft), where you alternate using the D-pad to, "look," or, "walk."
The N64 controller's design was basically a, "best of both worlds," senerio. Hold it one way and it was a standard D-pad with 6 buttons. Hold it the other and it's a joystick controller with a small D-pad (the c-buttons) and three regular buttons (A, B, and the Z-Trigger). That design made Mario 64 the industry standard for 3D platforming; the c-buttons could control a fluid, free moving camera without giving up access to the joystick. It was revolutionary and set a new standard for 3D gaming...for about a year. Then Sony invented the Duelshock controller, which pretty much every modern controller is based on. But for a while, the N64 controller was the only controller capable of fully utilizing the joystick and the D-pad, and years later, it gets ridiculed for being first.
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.
Honestly, I think, "both," really was the only choice. No one had developed for a joystick-exclusive console since the Atari days. Most third-party developers would have had a tough time porting and adapting their games over to an exclusively joystick layout. The other consoles of that generation, the Saturn and Playstation, both had D-pad only controllers and D-pad/joystick combination controllers; no one went joystick only. The N64 design was imperfect, but it allowed them to launch Mario 64 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy in the same year (and it was a step up from Sega's crack at it).
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.
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The designer of the controller had 3 arms and always wondered why people didn't like the design.
Better have a long tongue to reach the "Z" button with.
... or a better knowledge of your own anatomy and how angles work.
Thats like 4 to 4 1/2 inches to get to the Z button.
If your girlfriend can tickle your pickle, you should be able to uh, handle the plunge here.
Just relax, and say 'Ahh'.
The Z-spot
Yoshis tongue was based on the lead designers
Regular length tongue is fine. It's just not inserted all the way in the picture.
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The left hand goes on the left or the middle depending on the game.
Should be 3 mouths.
Is the middle prong not for perineum stimulation?
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.
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