Poll of the Day > What console has the worst standard controller?

(+) Yeah! (+)

By standard controller I mean the controller the comes with the system

My vote goes to the NES. super sharp edges and way too small for my hands. Makes me wonder why people want the nes classic so much when there are better options (yeah, yeah, collectors, blah blah blah).

Edit: I should mention that I mean actual good consoles (yeah, I know, subjective). Not some leapfrog type of crap.

Nintendo is pretty much my default answer for this question in recent times, but honestly, for their time periods, the NES and SNES controllers were probably the best of their respective generations.

And if we're talking overall across the entire span of gaming history, the NES and SNES don't even remotely come close to being the worst. Just in terms of button-placement and ergonomic design the N64 and GameCube were FAR worse than the NES and SNES designs, the Atari joysticks were generally kind of garbage, and the IntelliVision used to have a controller that would literally make your thumbs bleed (and I mean literally as in literally, not as a form of emphasis - the hard sharp plastic edge would cut your thumb open).

Dual Shock is probably the best controller design anyone's ever come up with by this point (though I have a personal preference for the Xbox S-controller/360 controller design because it's more comfortable than the Dual Shock in my giant adult hands).


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I'm just gonna go with the main consoles from NES - Now because otherwise it's easy to pick apart some dogshit knockoff console.

In any case, this answer is obvious.


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CDi
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I don't find the NES controller that uncomfortable and I think I have pretty big hands. The Nunchuck, for example, feels more uncomfortable to hold for a while.


I'm sure the worst ones are probably some obscure consoles I don't know much about. Worst that I've played? N64 has to get this by far, it's such an outdated design. Even at the time, the three prongs didn't make much sense and almost nothing used the d-pad or L button. The stick is flimsy and sometimes painful to use, having C buttons instead of a second stick is dumb in hindsight, and the rumble pak weighted it awkwardly.

Honorable mention to Sega Genesis for having three-button controllers even though some games were made to use a six-button controller.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Nintendo is pretty much my default answer for this question in recent times

If recent times being gamecube and up:

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


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.

wiiu: gamepad was cool to me.

switch: I don't have one yet, but it is just an improved wii u gamepad.

All controllers now days are fine. I prefer the PS controllers overall, but the XBOX controller isn't bad at all expect for fighting games.

NES is comfortable if you know where to hold your hands. It also comes from a time period when most gaming sessions were 30 minutes at most, so long lasting comfort wasn't a huge issue.

N64 is bad, but my vote probably goes to the Dreamcast. Those buttons are hell on your thumb and the analog stick is horrible. Plus the cord coming out of the bottom instead of the top? WTF???

The Xbox fat controller improved on it in every conceivable way.
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Nintendo Switch
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N64 is pretty terrible, but at least it was a gamepad. I'm going with the Wiimote, that thing sucks ass as a remote, as a motion sensor and as a pad. It's only tolerable in its primary function with that upgrade puck that plugs into the bottom which should have been built into it in the first place. They were later integrated, but it doesn't stop the original design from being a paperweight.

Atari 5800

Dikitain posted...

N64 is bad, but my vote probably goes to the Dreamcast. Those buttons are hell on your thumb and the analog stick is horrible. Plus the cord coming out of the bottom instead of the top? WTF???

I loved the Dreamcast controller. The grips were comfy as hell. The controller actually had a notch on the back to hook the cord, if that bothered you.
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Original Xbox's original controller

NES, horrible
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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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green dragon posted...

wiiu: gamepad was cool to me.

It was a lame tablet hammered into an oversized controller with poor stick placement, which was poorly supported by the software and mostly existed as even more of a gimmick than the Wiimote was, and ultimately helped kill the console.

And again, there was always a strong undercurrent of "I'd rather be using the Pro Controller" for a lot of people, which undermines it even further.



green dragon posted...

switch: I don't have one yet, but it is just an improved wii u gamepad.

Basically, which means it tends to fail in all the same ways as the Wii-U gamepad.

It's also not helped by the number of people who've said that the Joycons are kind of shit in purely hardware terms - a LOT of reviews for the Switch basically include a line or two about how you essentially NEED to buy the Pro Controller to make it worthwhile (a common phrasing is that the Switch is essentially a $370 console and not a $300 console, because of the extra ridiculous overpriced Pro Controller requirement).

But the Joycons also have extremely awkward button and stick placement (necessary to put the Joy cons on parity with each other in a multiplayer situation), fused with all of the worst aspects of the Wiimote (the motion controls, the two-piece issues of the Nuchuck, the awkward detection and connectivity issues). It's like the Wii and the Wii-U got together and had a baby, and that baby had Down Syndrome.

Ironically, the Pro Controller for the Switch is basically just the Xbox 360 design, so I'd be perfectly fine with it if not for the fact that pretty much everything else about the Switch is also a turn-off for me.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

poor stick placement

Sticks on top is the absolute best possible placement and I'm extremely sad we'll probably never get a controller with them like that again since lopsided seems to have won the stick placement war. :<
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I was actually very surprised how comfortable the Wii U's gamepad was. The Switch is also pretty comfortable, but the R1/L1 buttons are a bit awkward.
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Gamechamp3k posted...

Sticks on top is the absolute best possible placement

It really isn't.

Maybe if you're one of the "pro" players who always seem to hold controllers in odd ways to maximize button efficiency, but for the majority of players that's never going to be an issue.



Gamechamp3k posted...

since lopsided seems to have won the stick placement war. :<

As much as some people complain about it, it tends to be the best design when in-game controls are almost always pure movement on the left thumb with the right thumb alternating between looking around and action buttons. It's much easier to move your thumb up to hit a button and back down to look around than it is the reverse.

On the left side you COULD just put the two sticks parallel (ie, the left stick is on the bottom of the controller), but the standard state of play for most games is with your thumbs on the left stick and the right buttons for a majority of time, which makes the "lopsided" stick placement the one that actually keeps your thumbs in a more natural state most of the time.

The other problem is one of familiarity - the more we tend to use certain button designs and placements, the more natural they become to us through use, and the harder it gets to adapt to alternate control schemes. When multiple consoles use the same layouts, and multiple generations of players grow accustomed to those layouts, it becomes harder and harder for them to switch to anything different, even if the different thing might be more efficient in some way (see also, why we're all still typing on QWERTY keyboards right now).

It's part of why I've always said that, no matter how often the PC Master Race whines about keyboard/mouse controls being more precise than controller controls (which is technically true), in practice someone who has spent 30+ years of their life using a controller almost exclusively is going to be FAR more awkward when switching to keyboard/mouse, and may never reach a point where their keyboard/mouse reflexes and reactions reach a point that is actually superior to their controller reflexes. While the technology itself might be superior, their experience with it actually makes it subjectively inferior.

Which ties into Nintendo's desire to innovate - as we've more or less settled in to what we all tend to consider the "basis" design of a controller that is standardized across multiple consoles and console generations, it gets harder for players to accept changes that are radically different from that baseline. Things like the Wiimote or Wii-U may intrigue at first due to their novelty, but novelty wears off and we all mostly drift back to the comfortable familiar.


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the n64 is the worst by default, you couldn't even use a third of it unless you had three hands.

best is 360 or x1
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Easily N64, and honestly I'm not too big on the Joycons because of how small they are (and I have small hands). I like the Wii U and Switch Pro Controllers, though.

Original Xbox or Atari Jaguar were both pretty awful. Gamecube was wonky as hell as well.

Well there's the 1970s/80s shit. But I'll stick with Nintendo/Sega/Sony/Microsoft.

N64, Wiimote, and Switch are the worst controllers. Gamecube controller had potential, but the X and Y buttons are terrible.

The path that Nintendo has taken is unfortunate, because the SNES controller is one of the best of all time.

Gamechamp3k posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...
poor stick placement

Sticks on top is the absolute best possible placement and I'm extremely sad we'll probably never get a controller with them like that again since lopsided seems to have won the stick placement war. :<

I think it depends on what type of game you were playing. I could see the wiiu pro controller being good for shooters or games that don't use the face buttons very much (dark souls, etc).

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

Atari Jaguar

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Atari-Jaguar-Pro-Controller-Flat.jpg/220px-Atari-Jaguar-Pro-Controller-Flat.jpg

that looks horrible

N64

green dragon posted...

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

Atari Jaguar

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Atari-Jaguar-Pro-Controller-Flat.jpg/220px-Atari-Jaguar-Pro-Controller-Flat.jpg

that looks horrible

Looks are deceiving. I don't have a lot of experience with it. The only game I've come across that uses the keypad during gameplay is Blue Lightning to choose weapons. Otherwise, it's only used for game options. I've also found it to be very comfortable (did a several hour play session of Tempest 2000 and had no comfort issues) and the button layout is very good.
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Smarkil posted...

I'm just gonna go with the main consoles from NES - Now because otherwise it's easy to pick apart some dogshit knockoff console.

In any case, this answer is obvious.

Seconded.
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I'll go with the WII. Honestly I don't like motion controls much and the WII did do them right but holding a remote in one hand and a nunchuk in the other really was weird for me.
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wwinterj25 posted...

I'll go with the WII. Honestly I don't like motion controls much and the WII did do them right but holding a remote in one hand and a nunchuk in the other really was weird for me.

It's the N64.
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1st xbox controller
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xbox
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Sideways Joy-con.
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well are you, @ParanoidObsessive, are you high?

po pls answer
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The N64 controller. I don't even mind the design of it, the control stick just really, really sucked...

And, while I love the dreamcast, the controller wasn't super great... It was too easy for your thumb to slip on the control stick and the face buttons were too far apart. But the biggest issue with it is that's when sega ditched the 6-button layout for stock controllers :(
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The worst I ever used personally was the ps1 controller when I played at my friends, I hated that thing, when I got a new system I went with xbox and never looked back
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When I was playing the Mega Man collection for GameCube, that's when I realized the controller sucks. Admittedly part of the problem is that collection inexplicably swapped the A and B buttons, but even if they didn't do that, I don't think it would be a great controller for games like that. And yeah, I know they're just ports and a lot of the GameCube originals worked out with that controller, but there is really no reason to not just have the traditional symmetrical four-button layout

I'm amazed this topic took 7 Posts to rightly call out the n64 as the abomination it was.
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Either the Wii or the monster known as the original Xbox controller.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And if we're talking overall across the entire span of gaming history, the NES and SNES don't even remotely come close to being the worst. Just in terms of button-placement and ergonomic design the N64 and GameCube were FAR worse than the NES and SNES designs, the Atari joysticks were generally kind of garbage, and the IntelliVision used to have a controller that would literally make your thumbs bleed (and I mean literally as in literally, not as a form of emphasis - the hard sharp plastic edge would cut your thumb open).

Overlooking that ergonomic design is largely bullshit claim designed to sell products, I never really got the Gamecube complaints. My only major issue was the A & B buttons. Otherwise I loved a lot of it. The c-stick was a more comfortable option than just most analogs I've tried.

helIy posted...

well are you, @ParanoidObsessive, are you high?

po pls answer

Wasting your time, he ignores the mention system.
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Zeus posted...

Wasting your time, he ignores the mention system.

Wow I might actually be in PO's boat for once. You people don't deserve a mention system.
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Kana posted...

You people

what do you mean "you people"?
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Original Xbox by far the worst.

Overall best, Xbox One.

Personal favourite, Gamecube.

People saying the N64, but for the time when there were no analogue sticks let alone 2nd sticks it was great.

Man, I loved the Gamepad. I played pretty much entirely in handheld mode whenever I played Wii U. NES is my least favorite.

Kana posted...

Zeus posted...

Wasting your time, he ignores the mention system.

Wow I might actually be in PO's boat for once. You people don't deserve a mention system.

Wait, can you actually ignore it, or does he mean that PO just ignores it manually? I thought you couldn't disable those notifications unless the person making it is specifically on your ignore list

I'm still not sure how Nintendo expected us to press the 1 and 2 buttons on the Wii Remote while using it in Wii Remote + Nunchuk mode. At least with the N64 controller very few games used all three prongs.

The original Wii Classic Controller was pretty awful, too.
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faramir77 posted...

The original Wii Classic Controller was pretty awful, too.

I didn't think that controller was that bad but the only time I used it was to play VC games.

AdrammeIech posted...

faramir77 posted...

The original Wii Classic Controller was pretty awful, too.

I didn't think that controller was that bad but the only time I used it was to play VC games.

The control sticks were extremely close together and there was no comfortable way to hold the thing. Also, the cord coming out the bottom made very little sense. I get they were trying to invoke a SNES feel or something but it just didn't work.

I haven't even used it since I got a CC Pro.
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faramir77 posted...

AdrammeIech posted...

faramir77 posted...

The original Wii Classic Controller was pretty awful, too.

I didn't think that controller was that bad but the only time I used it was to play VC games.

The control sticks were extremely close together and there was no comfortable way to hold the thing. Also, the cord coming out the bottom made very little sense. I get they were trying to invoke a SNES feel or something but it just didn't work.

I haven't even used it since I got a CC Pro.

Oh I forgot about the wire coming out of the bottom. Ok, that part did bug me I'll admit that but I still liked it. I don't remember if I ever used the joy sticks though because it was pretty much just for NES and SNES games on the VC.

Dreamcast
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The nes controller doesn't have super sharp edges
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atari controller always break.

but phillip cd i controller. oh my god. try to play zelda using that. you have to move and press one button with one finger at a time.


http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/crappy-games/images/5/59/Philips_CDi_400_series.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2000?cb=20140601191109
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