A hand cramping fork of engineering malpractice.

Lol still think to this day why nintendo designed it this way. It was well used for first party though.

I'm not actually going to read this article...but the n64 controller is great, unless you're playing a game that requires you to do circles with the stick a lot...3

It's usable but it certainly wasn't comfortable. I managed to play my games just fine with it but it took a long time for me to adjust to it.

It was fine. For shooters and racers I certainly enjoyed it

It was a little weird but it worked. If the initial design for the ps3 controller was launched, we’d have a weird design that really was awkward as hell. https://www.engadget.com/20...

i bought a N64 in 2000 and sold after 2 weeks it was just unplayable after playstation controller,same as i sold my snes after 2 weeks for the same reason the controller sucked,to me N64 is the most garbage console i ever owned.i still consider it garbage the more i look through youtube videos.specialy cause i hate mario since childhood.thankfully Gamecube restored my friendship with nintendo consoles,which was later ruined again by wii

I think this was explained awhile back by someone from Nintendo: supposedly you’d always hold the right side with your right hand and then switch between analog mode with your left hand on the middle stick or classic d-pad mode with your left hand on the right stick. The analog mode is the one that caught on though so the d pad mode was rarely used

It was a really aesthetic design imo. The analog stick was almost impossible to use comfortably.

With your hands.

Hated it. Took me some time to get used to

All I remember of it was wearing a bloody hole in my palm playing Mario Party. I wore a batting glove with rotation mini games from then on.

It's not even that big. It was just dumb with the 3 handles.

The N64 controller is probably the worst controller ever invented, which is a shame because the N64 itself was a great machine.

That was the best controller of that era.

When i hold first time Wii controller with Nunchuck i feel like holding N64 controller with seperated plastic shells :D When you look images Left hand holding Wii Remote and Right hand holding Nunchuck :D I always feel like that.
(ESL Guy here)

the controller was built for 007 :)

I always held the controller with left hand on left handle, thumb crossing over to the joystick. Felt completely natural, but I had two friends that insisted on a bogus rumor going around that holding it like that messes up the joystick. One of em literally wouldn't let me use his controllers unless I promised to hold it by the center handle... which gave me next to no dexterity to use the stick. I used the same controller for six years and the stick's rotation is mildly creaky--standard long-term wear.

Quite easily. You got used to it pretty quickly and it was actually quite the fun controller to use

Easily. It was revolutionary and welcome in its day.

Just got back from a week vacation. The fellas brought an N64. Felt good. After years of not playing it, it was fine.

Dominated in Mario Kart.

It was a horrible controller. I remember it being alright back in the day. But went to a gaming arcade pub the other year and yeah.... Nostalgia on golden eye was ruined by the lack of a 2nd analogue. Tried to play it and gave up after 10mins. Just awkward to play.

Dunno, worked just fire for me back in the day and the analogue stick was a big plus.
Not really an issue now wouldn't you say? Like Nintendo, many of us have moved on. Besides, there are other 64 controller options out there.

It was super easy barely an inconvenience.

I genuinely think it's one of the reasons I steered clear of the N64 for the most part during the PS1 era. Just hated that controller (still do).

I did fine, thank you.

Great joypad playing games like Mario 64, OCoT, Pilotwings, Starfox 64, Fzero, would of been unintuitive with out this great design at the time. The central stick and Z trigger are genius, starfox 64 felt crap playing with Wii joypad on VC. And Sin & Punishment 64 even worse.

D pad and main buttons were good plus the 4 yellow buttons as movement worked quite well. it was very bulky and the joystick once crap got down there it became grindy

Is the author slow?
That would explain this article quite well then

I don't think it's as bad as many people say it is. I play the N64 constantly and it's still a good controller to use. Yes, the joystick is a big issues over time but all mine are great and it's still a breeze controlling Mario in Super Mario 64.

Was easy for me to use.

LOL!

with your hands?

https://66.media.tumblr.com...

Nintendo has always had odd or small controllers that came with their consoles. Regardless, they always amounted to hours of fun!

the controller was easy to use …. seriously can't find better things to talk about ?

say what you want about the N64 controller, it still managed to rock out on Goldeye and Perfect Dark …

not to mention set standards for FPS games played today …

so again while I loved it on Nintendo games like Mario Kart 64, it shined on 3rd party games all day long too ….

even if you had a BAD FUR DAY !!!

the analog stick had those concentric circles that would rub my thumb raw after a while. besides that It was a pretty good controller at the time.

I had no problem with it, but then again I’m not some game urinalist that was born after the PS2 era.

It’s the reason I never played many games on my N64.
Worst controller ever.

Grow a 3rd arm

I loved that controller!!!!! Noobs! Lol

It was great for shooters

Easy

How the heck does someone not understand by adulthood that you precede a consonant sound with "a," not "an?"

Was fine back in the day i found no issue .

Most games back then, if not almost every game, were dpad and buttons. The stick in the middle was only used on rare occasions (at least for me). But yeah the controller sucked, if you were used to the smaller NES ones and really sucks if you are used to a Playstation style controller.

I used it with my bare hands!

By never using the dpad and only using the thumstick to move for most games.

Nintendo will never win awards for the best controller category. That’s never really been the their expertise in my opinion. I used the 64 controller Just fine in the day, but some 10 years ago I tried it and couldn’t believe I used to play with this thing.

I rarely ever had my hand on the left side because L and the dpad were hardly used, it was easy.

Millenials!!!!

Well, back when that was a thing, 3D games were a relatively recent development or at least the proliferation of them was. Neither console manufacturers nor the consumer had an established notion of how a controller should be designed to accommodate that fundamental shift. Sony just happened to stumble upon a better design choice. But, for many the N64 was their first foray into 3D games and that's the controller they were accustomed to at the time. Looking back, controllers have only gotten better, but for the time it wasn't a bad design. It just wasn't the type of controller worth sticking with for more than one gen (not that Nintendo has ever tried sticking with one).

Pretty easy as long as you're not a brain dead dolt

I loved the N64 controller it was great for games like golden eye.

Seriously, real gamers played them and still kicked ass. The N64 controller and The OG Xbox Duke controller was played by the hardcore players at the time.

Didn't have any issues with the controller personally, just had to get used to the different grip styles.
But sure the second analog stick in newer controllers was a huge improvement.

Very carefully.

Two speedrunners received permanent damage to their hands because of the N64 controller.

Let’s face it it brought analogue controls to the masswe
I used mine with my hands 😱🤦🏻‍♂️
Did what it was built for very well
Only needed 2 hands being as you don’t control with a d-pad and analogue at the same time nor did you need to back then. D-pad for fighting games etc and analogue for Mario 64 which also revolutionised gaming.

Easily. maybe this guy is a bit special.

Try it with Mario 64 and you'll understand how good that controller can be. I've played the game through emulation with other controllers but when you use the N64 controller to play it it's like night and day. Its like the N64 controller was designed specifically for Mario 64.

Quite easily actually. It was by far the best pad for shooters at the time.

"Use AN Nintendo..." this is how much of a joke N4G is...not only can you get banned for stating your opinion, they allow grammatically incorrect articles to become "top news articles." This place is the definition of "a joke."

we didn't know better.

Was an absolutely terrible controller. Thank god the dual shock came out.

It boggles the mind that people actually enjoyed playing games on the n64. The n64 controller is absolutely the worst ever made.

this person clearly never played an N64 before coming to this conclusion. the controller worked perfectly fine and if anything was one of the more comfortable controllers to use

worst controller ever. the main reason i never bought a 64.

This controller wasn't hard to use. You make it sound like you had to use all three 'feet' at the same time - you don't, that's not the point. You hold it for the analogue and the face buttons if you're playing a game which uses it, allowing you to use the Z button underneath. Or, if it uses the D-Pad, you have access to the shoulder button instead.

Maybe the writer is young and never actually owned an N64 when they were younger? those of us who did never had any problems (well, until the thumbstick wore out and started to go wobbly).

Hehe, yeah, looking back it does seem to be an atrocious design but at the time it somehow worked. I remember Turok and Golden Eye feeling great to control, even when playing couch-versus.

Tried playing again recently on an emulator though and it was horrible. Would take ages to get used to again now we are accustomed to modern controllers.

Yeah even back in the day the n64 controller was pretty bad.

The basic tech in this controller revolutionized gaming

If the Wii was anywhere near as accurate as the Move....