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It was a step in the right direction and cemented the fact that games now needed 6 buttons, but the controller was a little too awkward. The 6 buttons covered too much space and it was difficult to use all of them effectively. The controls were managable but not as easy to use as the Super Nintendo.
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Rather than copying the SNES and placing 2 of the buttons on top of the controller, they placed all 6 buttons for the right thumb. So they added 3 new buttons to the controller. Sega had to create a new controller to keep up with game design. In 1993 many games were being mapped to the Super Nintendo's 6 button layout making them difficult to convert over to the Genesis. Sega Genesis (6 button) Pictured left is the old controller and on the right is the new 6 button controller. "Street Fighter 2" being an example of what the console and the controller could handle. This controller also allowed fighting games to be successfully ported over to the console. The SNES could handle all the genres that the Genisis and the NES had but with an added layer of gameplay. Game Types - With more buttons on the controller and all of them being very easy to access games got even more complex and fast. The player now had the tools to move the artform forward. It lead to faster and more complex games. Now the player could quickly locate and use 6 buttons and fully control the directional pad with no issues. It felt natural to hold the controller with a thumb on the d-pad a thumb over the A,B,X,Y buttons and the pointer fingers resting on top of the controller against the L and R buttons. So the additional two buttons were placed on top of the controller. Nintendo knew that 6 buttons all located for the right thumb would be too much to handle. Furthermore fighting games were becoming more popular in the early 90s and controllers needed at least 6 buttons to mimick the arcade. Since games were becoming more complex it was difficult to map a game on just 2 to 3 buttons and these 4 buttons gave developers a lot more action to play with. The SNES had four buttons that could be reached with the right thumb. This is why the NES controller and later the Sega Genesis controller were such hits, they had minimal buttons and all were easy to use.
#SEGA SATURN HARDCORE GAMING 101 FULL#
Early systems (namely the Intellivision and Colecovision) had many buttons on the controller but they were placed in such a way it was very difficult to take full advantage of them. In 1990, Nintendo finally came out with a new system, and with it a better controller. You'll see that the NES controller basically continues it dominance as the best way to interact with games and as all the popular consoles at this time were basically upgrades of the NES model. Now I am going to look at how controllers changed throughout the 90s to today.