The Evolution of the Nintendo Controller

It's finally here: Nintendo's Wii U is coming to the world on Sunday. It's been a long time coming, but the wait isn't really for the games: Ever since we saw that gamepad—that weird, freakish, beautiful, intimidating, what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-it-who-cares-I-want-it controller—we've been obsessed with the Wii U.

How'd they come up with it? What, exactly, is it capable of? And how the hell did we—gamers, developers, designers, Nintendo, the world—get here to begin with?

Well, that's the thing: The more we stared at it, the more we realized that this thing's been in the making for a very long time. Just like every Nintendo controller has. While—unlike other systems—their controllers vary in design wildly from console to console, they all share a very, very distinct DNA.

As such, this is The Evolution of the Nintendo Controller: 15 Gamepads That Changed Nintendo Forever.

RELATED: The Best Super Nintendo Games Ever Made

RELATED: The 100 Best Old School Nintendo Games

Follow @ComplexVG

Year: 1986

System: Family Computer Disk System

The Legacy: The O.G. of Nintendo periphreals, two of these controllers came boxed in with the Family Computer Disk System (or: "Famicom"), the very first Nintendo home gaming console that played more than one game. The Famicom controllers were stored on the sides of the system, where they could conveniently be docked, kind of (since they were hardwired to the system, they also couldn't be removed).

They did, however, lay the groundwork for the Nintendo controller everyone would come to know and love. Also: The second controller had a volume switch and a microphone, but no select or start buttons. The microphone hasn't reappeared on a Nintendo controller until the Wii U. The volume switch, however, returned on the Wii.

Year: 1985

System: Nintendo Entertainment System

The Legacy: Likely the most iconic video game controller in the world. The North American NES controller in all of it's red, black, and grey glory has become a cultural symbol essentially unrivaled for the lasting image of video game controllers: A directional pad, two buttons, a select button, and a start button. The big changes from the Famicom controller?

Note the boxy, hard edges of the NES controller in sharp contrast with the softer, rounded, and lifted edges from the Famicom. And just like the Famicom, the NES controller would come around on the other end as the basic building block of the Nintendo Wii Remote. But that wouldn't come for almost two decades after this.

Year: 1987

System: Nintendo Entertainment System

The Legacy: The first major NES peripheral released by Nintendo that wasn't a light gun, the Advantage had an arcade-style joystick and fat, red buttons to mash to your heart's content, or until you reshaped your thumbs. That said: Who needs to mash buttons when you have twin Turbo buttons (and dials to tune how much 'Turbo' you wanted) on this thing?

But the Turbo modifier became more of a third-party accessory business; this wasn't really Nintendo's style. And the joystick? It mostly stayed in the arcades, and on third-party controllers as well. That said, this thing does have a very real pop culture legacy that lives on through today: At the end of Ghostbusters 2, the NES Advantaged is paired with a Sony Walkman to control the Statue of Liberty.

Year: 1988

System: Nintendo Entertainment System

The Legacy: The NES Max was the forgotten stepchild that fell somewhere between the NES Controller and the NES Advantage: It was cheaper than the NES Advantage, but unlike the advantage, the buttons didn't hold. That said: It might have been ahead of its time. Nintendo would return to a two-pronged boomarang-shaped controller more than a few times. Also, it looked incredibly slick for the time.

The flat, 360-degree D-Pad? While it wasn't of much use in 8-Bit games, it, too, would return in full form over twenty years later, as the prominent control of the Nintendo 3DS. Lest you think it was totally forgotten, the internet has evidence of at least one person who genuinely cared about it (at least enough to throw an old NES Max commercial on YouTube).

Year: 1989

System: Game Boy

The Legacy: The mobile gaming revolution was a grey brick, but a grey brick that changed everything. It was ultimately indistinguishable from the NES controller on the surface, which made it so patently approachable: In 1989, the idea of fitting the Nintendo controller and the game and the system was utterly futuristic, but at the same time, not at all intimidating: The same buttons made Mario run and jump on the Game Boy as they did on the NES.

That said, the Game Boy was still a moment for controllers: Instead of being set directly across from the D-Pad, the "A" and "B" buttons were offset to the upper-right side of the Game Boy, the way your thumbs naturally tilt up instead of to the side. From this point forward, all NES button layouts would be offset, and the controllers adapted that same curve on the side.

Year: 1991

System: Super Nintendo

The Legacy: In 1991, the Super Nintendo took everything we knew about video games, and made it slightly more complicated: Not just two buttons on the face of the controller, but four. "A" and "B" for the original buttons, and "X" and "Y", named after axis alignment planes. Like the Game Boy, the buttons were offset diagonally. The four aligned in a diamond formation that would eventually influence the controllers of systems that were barely a glimmer in Sony or Microsoft's eyes, yet (the PlayStation and Xbox controllers, of course), which is to say nothing of the shoulder buttons that changing gaming forever, as well.

Finally, the controller's most important innovation? Something Sega had already beaten them to with the Genesis: A rounded base, meant to align more naturally with the way gamers actually held controllers (as opposed to the hard, boxy ways of NES controllers that jabbed and bruised many a hand).

Year: 1993

System: NES-101

The Legacy: Oh, you think we forgot about the NES-101? The Nintendo Entertainment System 101 (or NES2, for short) received a short-lived re-release two years after the Super Nintendo had already debuted for those still clinging desperately to their Nintendos. Note how Nintendo took the curved body of the SNES controller, and simply applied it to an NES controller. The problem?

People don't like change, especially to that which they recently hold sentimental. Also, without the top buttons of the SNES controller, the new, curvier shape was indistinguishable from a dogbone. It was available from October '93 to March '94, and then went off the market.

Year: 1995

System: Virtual Boy

The Legacy: Ah, the Virtual Boy: One of Nintendo's most sensational out-and-out failures (and thus, one with a rabid cult following). What was supposed to be a three-dimensional, home console replicating the "virtual reality" arcade craze of the moment ended up being a big red eyesore, both figuratively (it was critically panned and developers didn't want to make games for it) and literally (it caused vision problems in chronic Virtual Boy gamers).

But it was important in one respect: Following what they started with the NES Max, the boomarang design extended to two full handles, which would later be turned into three handles, when the Nintendo 64 would be released a few years later. It also introduced the idea of shoulder buttons being offset under the controller: In other words, triggers.

Year: 1996

System: Nintendo 64

The Legacy: The single biggest console-to-console change in home gaming history was the Nintendo 64's controller: An M-Shaped contraption that looked like it was modeled after an alien bird, the N64 controller was just as notable for what it did have as for what it didn't. To start with the obvious: The analog stick, a full joystick that fit right over your thumb. The body of the controller? There were three different ways of holding it: With the D-Pad and the left-set buttons, with the analog stick and the left-set buttons, or with the analog stick and the D-Pad (which only a few games actually used).

As for those buttons? There were ten of them, one of which was the "trigger" idea introduced in the Virtual Boy. The game held the space for a memory pack, or a graphics expansion pack, or the rumble pack, the first time a "vibration" feature was introduced into a console system, which is now generally standard in all consoles. More than anything else? The thing just felt awesome in your hands. Of every Nintendo controller, the 64 set the standard for innovation, and was by far and away the most crucial step in the evolution of all the controllers to come.

Year: 2001

System: Nintendo GameCube

The Legacy: The GameCube controller aimed to take what Nintendo did with the 64, and size it down: Two directional controls aligned to one side, a "view" control (the "C-Stick") as a second analog on the right-hand side. Note the sharp influence of both the Virtual Boy and especially the NES Max "boomerang" shape that had come thirteen years prior. While the button layout wasn't perfect-some gamers felt that the "Y" button was slightly high on the controller body for their thumbs to reach-there was real brilliance in the GameCube controller.

See those curved, indented shoulder buttons? Finally, Nintendo had figured out how to put "triggers" on the top of a controller, instead of under it, and they managed to fit another button on there, too (the "Z" button). While the 64 might have wowed more people, the GameCube controller no doubt has more devotees for just how much of a cheeky crowd-pleaser it genuinely aimed to be.

Year: 2006

System: Nintendo Wii

The Legacy: In 2006, Nintendo changed everything, again. When Sony made the same Playstation controller for the third time, and Microsoft just a slight tweak on the original Xbox controller, the Wii? It took everything Nintendo had previously done, ripped it apart, and put it back together, in a manner of speaking. The Wii Remote is basically just an NES Controller for the Modern Age (which is to say nothing of the way it plays actual NES games).

Remember the Famicom Gamepad? The volume control returned to an Nintendo gamepad for the first time since Nintendo made a controller, but instead of a microphone, a speaker had been built into the controller. The trigger of the last three controllers was perfected: It was offset to the side, but under it, on the belly of the controller. The analog stick arrangement? However you wanted it. Instead of two analog sticks and a D-Pad, Nintendo released the analog could be both, while the Wiimote could function as the "look" via a sensor bar. And of course: The "nun-chuck"-with a perfect hand-fit contour-could be played on either hand, the first time left-handed gamers were offered an opportunity like it as a standard option. The Wii Remote initially appeared understated and underwhelming. Time proved it to be a thing of mad brilliance.

Year: 2006

System: Nintendo Wii

The Legacy: Along with the Wii Remote, though, was the Classic Controller: A sad variation on the GameCube controller, without any of the colorful flair. The Wii Classic is primarily meant to be used with SNES and Nintendo 64 games as purchased through the Nintendo store, but couldn't be used on GameCube games.

Year: 2009

System: Nintendo GameCube

The Legacy: Released in 2009, the Wii Classic Controller Pro was meant to solve the problem of the Wii Classic Controller's limitations, and reverted further into the boomerang shape, yet again. Still, it never quite matched the ambition or the pluck of the GameCube controller.

Year: 2012

System: Nintendo Wii U

The Legacy: The future, as it exists in the present? As far as Nintendo controllers are considered, it has elements of everything that ever came before it, with plenty thrown out: Again, the boomerang design is abandoned, but triggers on the bottom are kept.

But just like the last time Nintendo shot for the rafters to revolutionize controllers-the 64-they've again created a focal point that's squarely in the center of the unit: A touch-screen pad, with a stylus, throwing the Nintendo DS and the GameCube controller (or the Wii Classic) together for a piece of hardware more or less unlike anything the home gaming world has seen before.

Year: 2012

System: Nintendo Wii U

The Legacy: The final word in Nintendo controllers, for now, stands in stark contrast to the Wii U GamePad (their most daring moment since the Nintendo 64 controller) as Nintendo's most conservative controller yet: The dual-analog setup with four shoulder buttons is, for lack of a better way to put it, a mash-up of the current PS3 controller and the Xbox 360 controller, with smoother lines.

That said, like the Xbox and PS3 controllers, it carries so much of the DNA that Nintendo put into innovating the controller game to begin with: The four-button diamond pattern, the shoulder buttons, the analog sticks, the offset buttons. Whether or not this is the final word for the next few years in controllers or just a temporary stopgap between innovations? We'll have to wait until the next one to really know. But just remember, lest you think this is a revolution of some kind: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The first Nintendo controller to have a microphone in it isn't the Wii U. Far from it. That'd be the Famicom, which turned 26 this year.

And for all that's not going to be said about this controller, the devil's in the details, here: That right-aligned analog stick is offset towards the top of the controller, instead of the bottom, where Nintendo (and everyone else) has been putting right-side analog sticks for years. Whether or not the higher analog works might be this controller—and maybe even, the Wii U's—legacy to come.