Stupid "Nintendo's 7 Biggest Mistakes" article

[A Black Falcon]

The N64 controller put an analog stick next to a lot of buttons, and was a move that changed the industry and was something pretty much required for 3D games to get as fun as their 2D counterparts. That said, it was hardly perfect. To me, the 3 stick setup was just silly. It had a Z button and it had an L button, but with that setup, they were not really 2 buttons in the sense that a programmer could really make use of them for two functions. The Z button was a great design, but the rest could have used improvement. The analog stick of the N64 was fragile, as would be found out. Also, it was hard plastic and personally I always got blisters using the thing. Other companies improved on it by using, for example, two control sticks. They also made them more durable and covered the stick in soft rubber. Nintendo copied these improvements themselves and now with the Wii the control sticks are pretty much perfect. The 3 grip thing died with the N64 and I'm glad to see it go. It is a lot more convenient, and I can make use of ALL the controller's buttons, when it's all put on two grips. The only hard thing is setting up where the left stick and direction pad are. The Gamecube didn't really get it right at all, but the XBox 360 did it perfect. Now really the only thing to be upset about is that the 360's direction pad sucks.

As I said, I completely disagree. The N64 controller is the best gamepad ever. As I said in my first post, in response to the article...

The N64 controller was bad? No it wasn't. It's my favorite gamepad ever, actually, and for many good reasons. Six buttons, awesome dpad (underused perhaps, but great quality), great analog stick (yes, it degrades fast. It's still the best.), trigger button (triggers >>> shoulder buttons)... what more can you ask for from a gamepad? Dual analog and two shoulder buttons per side? Dual analog is not overly useful and two shoulder buttons per side is one of my least favorite gamepad "innovations" ever...

As for the three handles, I think it was a great design actually. It meant that it was the one and only controller ever where both the dpad and analog stick were actually both designed to be in the optimum position on the controller... in every other one one of them (the upper one usually) is in the optimum position and the other is just stuck down below it. The N64's design was better. Yes, it does mean that L is hard to press in analog stick games and Z in dpad ones, but oh well... they ARE still used sometimes as a selection button or something, like Zelda and the map on/off button, and that's good enough. I far prefer that setup to having dual shoulder buttons or something...

As for control sticks, the N64 control sticks definitely do break down quickly. However, they make up for it by being awesome. The N64 analog stick is my favorite one ever... it has a somewhat unique feel that no other stick replicates. The GC stick just isn't quite the same (and isn't as good), despite its better durability...

And besides, I have one dead GC controller and another one with an ... expanded ... dead zone, so they are hardly perfect either.

As for the 360 dpad, if you open up the controller evidently you can file down the plastic ring or something, making that dpad work better...