The Best Ever Game Controller May Be Set for a Comeback

We precocious told you wherefore the Nintendo 64 controller was really terrible, contrary to immoderate flawed puerility memories you whitethorn have. Now let's instrumentality a look astatine wherefore the GameCube controller is rather the opposite. In fact, it stands arsenic 1 of the champion joypads Nintendo has ever released, and a superb illustration of however overmuch Nintendo could amended successful conscionable 1 console generation.

Launched alongside the diminutive GameCube successful 2001, the controller beautifully refined the inputs of the N64's. Its main thumbstick and D-Pad were aligned for casual reach, portion the 4 C-buttons of its predecessor evolved into their last form, the C-stick, a long-overdue 2nd thumbstick that allowed for amended camera controls.

The awkwardly placed Z-trigger of the N64 became the GameCube's Z-button, sitting atop the close enarthrosis trigger, portion the near and close triggers themselves curved outwards to people hug players' fingers.

The GameCube pad besides offered immoderate bold plan choices of its own, specified arsenic the ultra salient A button, surrounded by outer B, X, and Y buttons—the second 2 returning for the archetypal clip since the SNES. The asymmetry is inactive a spot unusual to look at, but mechanically it works marvelously.

Making Mario jump, his raison d'etre, is mapped to that colossal A fastener successful Super Mario Sunshine; it's the main enactment fastener for Luigi's Mansion oregon The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the sprout fastener successful Metroid Prime. It mildly reminded players—and possibly adjacent developers—how often a azygous look fastener dominates power layouts, and however controls tin often beryllium simplified to minimize inputs successful the archetypal place.

Overall, it was an incredibly ergonomic controller, much comfy to clasp than its predecessor, and a amended acceptable for the grip of homo sapiens—a taxon which, as antecedently discussed, evolved to typically person 2 hands, not three.

Free As a Bird

Nintendo adjacent improved connected the GameCube controller conscionable a twelvemonth later, with the glorious WaveBird model—a wireless upgrade that yet chopped the cord for console gaming.

The GameCube wasn't the archetypal console to present a cordless controller—that grant probably, technically, goes to the Atari 2600—but the WaveBird did marque the thought yet viable. Many earlier efforts relied connected an infrared detector (such arsenic Nintendo's ain NES Satellite, which allowed up to 4 players to link to the humble NES from 4.5 meters away), but arsenic the tech required a strict line-of-sight from controller to receiver to work, they often flopped. Others, specified arsenic this monstrosity Intel attempted arsenic a wireless PC controller successful 1999, required salient basal stations to beryllium installed.