LogFAQs > #877135571

green dragon posted...

If recent times being gamecube and up:

For me, "recent" is anything N64 and after, because I feel like that's when the market underwent a significant qualitative shift.

I generally tend to lump gaming into three periods, with 1-2 gen as the first part (along with the occasional pre-1st gen oddity or prototypes), 3-4 being the second, and now 4-8 being the "current" era.

And honestly, the N64 controller was one of the worst modern controllers I've ever used. I hated its design and how Nintendo tended to map functions to the various buttons. It plays a large part in why I generally disliked the N64 as a whole both system-wise and game-wise.



green dragon posted...

NGC: great controller. better than Xbox worse than (by not much) dual shock

For me it was easily the worst controller of its generation. Sure, it was better than the N64 (though that's damning with faint praise), but the button placement was awkward and needlessly iconoclastic which was a huge negative for me - especially when the PS1's original vanilla controller, the Dual Analog, and DualShock controllers had already existed for years with a far superior design (and which I'd gotten very used to using during the previous generation, when every game I wanted to play was on the PS1 and I was shunning the N64 like the plague).

I might be willing to give the edge to the GameCube controller over the awkwardness of the Xbox Duke (though even that is questionable, because as awkward as it was the Duke button placement was still better), but the S-controller was better in every possible way (and became the prototype for the next generation's 360 controller, which is still one of the best ever made in terms of pure design).

I might also be willing to concede the GameCube was better than the Dreamcast controller because of how clunky the Dreamcast controller was (mainly due to the space given over to pointless docking capability), but again, that's still a case where the button placement tends to override other factors for me.



green dragon posted...

wii : yeah, some people hate it, but even if you exclude motion controls (which I didn't mind), this is honestly the most comfortable controller. The wiimote and nunchuck fit in my hands well. the lack of buttons is a downer, but most of the games I have played didn't suffer because of it. I will say that i used the classic controller a lot. the CC was pretty uncomfortable but gives you access to a more standard way to play.

I utterly loathe the motion controls, even aside from the fact that in early versions they weren't even as precise as they became later on. But ignoring the gimmick, the Wiimote is still kind of poorly designed (held straight on it's an abomination, held sideways it's just a shittier NES controller). When you throw in the Nunchuk it gets even worse, because that basically feels like someone decided to crossbreed an N64 controller with a PC mouse and wound up with the worst aspects of both in a combo that resulted in a two-piece controller (which is almost always more awkward than having a single mass).

It's not entirely surprising that this is the generation where "I only want to play games that support the GameCube Controller/Classic Controller/Pro Controller" became a common sentiment from a lot of people when it came to the Wii - a sentiment which was generally a negative when you consider that many of their core mainstream games didn't support it.

And comparing it to its direct competition, the 360 and PS3 controllers, it's easily the worst of its generation.
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