Nintendo 64: the strangest controller that ever made sense.

The Nintendo 64 launched in 1996. It sold half as many units as the PlayStation it competed with. It produced more single-defining games per release year than any console since. The controller is genuinely indefensible. We love it.

The controller, honestly

• 01Three handles. Three. Nintendo expected you to hold it one of three ways depending on the game.
• 02An analog stick where the D-pad usually sat. That stick wore out within six months of any serious use.
• 03Trigger on the back that nobody knew what to do with for the first two years.
• 04C-buttons in a yellow diamond on the right. Camera control or face buttons depending on the game.
• 05It looked like a trident designed by an alien. It also worked, somehow.

What the N64 gave the industry

• 01Super Mario 64 — the entire grammar of 3D platformers, invented in one game.
• 02GoldenEye 007 — the entire grammar of console first-person shooters. Halo owes it everything.
• 03Ocarina of Time — the entire grammar of 3D adventure games. Every Souls game is a descendant.
• 04Mario Kart 64 — four-player split-screen as the default party game.
• 05Smash Bros — a fighting game where everyone could be playing for the first time.

What was painful at the time

• 01Cartridges. While the PlayStation shipped CD games, the N64 was on chips. Sony got Final Fantasy VII; Nintendo got 'load times of zero'.
• 0232MB max cartridge size in a CD-ROM era. Developers worked miracles.
• 03Third-party developers fled to Sony. Nintendo's exclusives carried the entire console.
• 04Only 30 launch titles in three years. Quality was extraordinary; quantity wasn't.

"

The N64 was the last console where every game on it felt designed for the controller, not ported to it. The trident demanded purpose. Each game was a justification of the controller's existence.

What the N64 still feels like that nothing has matched

• 01Four controllers in the box, plugging straight into the console. No batteries, no pairing, no accounts. You're playing in 30 seconds.
• 02First-party Nintendo design discipline — the games felt curated, not algorithmically arranged.
• 03Local-only multiplayer that demanded everyone be in the same room.
• 04A console that knew exactly what it was for: sit on the floor with three friends, make noise.

Why we still talk about it

The N64 was the last console where every game on it felt designed for the controller, not ported to it. The PlayStation's controller worked for everything — which means it was perfect for nothing in particular. The N64's trident demanded purpose. Mario 64 needed the analog stick. GoldenEye needed the C-buttons. Each game was a justification of the controller's existence.

Nintendo hardware still does this — the Wii Remote, the Switch's detachable Joy-Cons — and every time it's the controller that gets ridiculed first and copied second. The N64 was the start of that pattern. The trident was right. The trident was very right.