Every Controller Ever

I’ve held so many different controllers in my hands over the years that I couldn’t tell you the exact count anymore. Atari 2600, Master System, NES, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, PlayStation, Virtual Boy, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Xbox, Wii, Switch, and everything after that. It never stops.

But somewhere along the way these stopped being just input devices and became the subject of actual honest arguments. Which one fits your hand best. Which is actually comfortable. Which one looks good. How many buttons is too many. Which one survives your messy teenage bedroom and a drunken birthday party without snapping.

These things are design objects. Real design. Someone sat down and thought about the curve of your palm against plastic, the weight, where your thumb naturally falls. All of it intentional. I watched this history of controllers once and realized how much you can tell about an era from the shape of its controller—what mattered to designers, what they thought players wanted, what they got wrong.

The Super Nintendo one is obviously mine. Perfect proportions. Nothing wasted. It knows what it’s doing. If you’ve been following this blog at all, you probably already knew that.