I still enjoy the grind of the originals, it’s tough but satisfying to slowly get stronger. But then again, Phantasy Star 2 is one of my favorites, so I guess I might be in the minority there.
That’s $113 in today’s dollars.
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Difficult to disagree imo
It certainly solidified a lot of standards we take for granted today. It was very forward thinking.
All of Nintendo’s controllers leading up to and including the Wii (with maybe the exception of the GCN controller) really led to incredible advancements in gameplay. The DS did too actually.
GCN controller was unique and great but not a wholly new way of playing or holding a controller compared to its competitors at the time.
It’s probably the most important controller ever. But as much as I love the aesthetics I prefer the dogbone and its successor in the SNES controller.
The NES controller is highly significant for its effect on future controllers but it has been surpassed in comfort and functions many times over. It would be weird if it hadn’t been improved upon.
I hate it when people claim it had the first d-pad, though. The Intellivision pad is very much a d-pad even though it wasn’t called that at the time.
People talk about the NES, but the Famicom controller was first and is a much more comfortable shape that was made more square just for the boxy US design. NES pads use literally the same board inside as Famicom controller 1 revision 2 (early 84 with plastic buttons). I now use an 8bitdo NES DIY kit in a Fami shell 
Well the NES isn’t even Nintendo’s first dpad, which evolved over time in game and watches and was fully formed in the Donkey Kong G&W.
Intellivision was one of the earlier ‘thumb’ controllers, instead of being a hand joystick, but isn’t the full dpad design or tech. It’s a round disc that hits two laters of thin moulded plastic with traces on them. Essentially a slightly more advanced leaf connector.
They’re less reliable, have no ‘give’ to serve as feedback, and fail easily after repeated use.
Nintendo’s tech, taken from calculators and applied on the G&W, and used by every system ever since, uses rubber membranes. The dpad innovation was applying a plastic button over rubber membranes, so you get a solid feeling button but with some nice ‘give’ to it as it registers a hit.
Originally Famicom had just the rubber for the buttons, but they were replaced with plastic as well in early 84 as part of the Famicom recall.
Gamecube’s face button layout was a superb re-think of modern game design’s needs. Almost every 3D game ever made has one main button and a couple of secondary buttons, and it’s the only design that allows rolling the thumb comfortably to three secondary buttons from the main one without hitting another.
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Agreed, but NES, SNES, N64, and Wii really gave us games not possible before their controllers were introduced. GCN was more of a refinement and re-interpretation of previous controllers without much in the way of additional functionality. Other than the analogue triggers, games on the GCN could have worked identically on a PS1 controller.
GCN controller’s face button layout and ergonomics were incredible though. It really moulded to your hand in a way no controller did prior. And the face buttons were certainly part of making the experience far more intuitive.
Yeah, Nintendo’s d-pad is better than Mattel’s because of that design. I’m just saying the InTV controller has a digital directional pad AKA d-pad so it’s strange when it gets excluded. And who knows? There could be something more obscure that’s even earlier.
Yeah fair enough I guess it did technically have a directional pad in a sense, though it depends on your definition of pad?
When people say the Nintendo invented the dpad on the Game & Watch it’s really shorthand for ‘invented the exact dpad design still in use to this day on every controller’. There were developments that led toward it, Nintendo didn’t invent any of the underlying technology anyway, they were just the first that applied it in that way to that application which became ubiquitous.
It’s similar to the complaints that ‘Nintendo didn’t invent the analogue stick’, when what it really means when people say that is they invented the design and its application to movement in 3D space which is still in use in every controller today.
Something interesting.
I grabbed a copy of Tobidase Daiaskusen on FDS
And it has something interesting over the label on the b-side
My crappy translation:
Tobidase Daiaskusen Famicon [kanji I don’t know]
While Game Over
Controller 1 B button 4 times while dpad button up left
Start during
So is some kind of cheat code. Maybe a sticker from a magazine back in the day?
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Yeah, that’s the hard mode cheat and it has a Famitsu (Famicom Tsushin) logo.
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You’re right, there is something earlier. Like most “inventions” by the big gaming companies when it came to hardware, it was only a new iteration on an idea that was already in place.
In 1979, a full 6 years before Nintendo, a company called Interstate Industries Inc filed the earliest example of a cross-shaped switch, much like the d-pads we know today. Nintendo even cites the original 1979 patent (among many others) in their design, which means Nintendo was fully aware that their design was not original.
The design in 1979 even has a fulcrum point in the middle of the switch, in the form of a pin, so it will pivot much the same as Nintendo’s design.
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Nintendo’s fully formed dpad using the exact same technology as today was released to the public in 1982 though, but was only filed as a patent in the US in 1985.
Nintendo’s patent also described the full technology, not just a design, with rubber membranes underneath.
“a support member constituting a fulcrum between the base plate and the key top, a plurality of conductive rubbers disposed opposing to the plurality of electrodes so as to be in electrical contact with corresponding ones of the electrodes, and a sustaining member having the plurality of conductive rubbers fixed thereto and having elastic force for sustaining the conductive rubbers so as not to be in contact with the electrodes when the key top is not pressed.”
Everything is a continuum in innovation leading up to it, but this is slightly different because (to my knowledge) this is the original source of its final form, the exact design used today. The Switch Pro controller/Dual Shock 4 etc dpads have everything from the original DK52 dpad, and also nothing more.
Yeah, it’s definitely a well needed refinement from Nintendo, and wouldn’t have become anything like what we know today without their improvements.
Namco’s early Famicom games are so good. Pac Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Mappy, moving into Druaga and Sky Kid.
Beautiful clean arcade ports. Much closer to their arcade counterparts than Nintendo’s efforts like Donkey Kong.
Actually I think Namco is the third best developer and publisher on the Fami/NES after Konami/Nintendo. Far ahead of the very patchy Capcom and Sunsoft, and the limited Technos and Hudson. Any other possible contenders?
Also I did a collection count.
250 Famicom
69 Famicom Disk
73 NES
392… less than my estimate of nearly 500, I always overestimate.
A few variants in there (Japanese and NES versions, mostly the Konami games).
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Tecmo’s pretty awesome for the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, Solomon’s Key series, Mighty Bomb Jack, Rygar, and their sports games. They don’t have quite the quantity of some others, though.
I just won an auction on Dragon Warrior II!!!
Can’t wait to play it. I hope I fall in love with this one like the original.
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