I am probably going to get hate for this, but I don’t think too highly of this console.
Sure, some of the games at the time were astonishing and well regarded classics, but man oh man do I dislike the controller, it just feels so… alien to hold you know?
Another thing too, the cartridge format whilst snappy, suffered from making too many cutbacks compared to the disc format of PS1 and Saturn which gave you pretty much the full scoop.
I am sure Nintnedo had their reasons at the time, but to me it was almost like it was a death by a thousand cuts scenario, a really powerful machine let down by not using what is literally the next gen medium at the time.
Let me know your thoughts, it is fine to disagree as the console is well respected with both nostalgia and entertainment, I’m just an outlier here.
I lived through it, and even as kids we all agreed the N64 controller was weird and illogical. But we got used to it and it was not a hurdle or a detriment to the console. You could tell if people had played before if they held the center grip or the left grip.
It was weird in a Nintendo way, yeah, but imo there was hardly anything illogical about it. The triple handle setup was reasoned in the way that if there was a more “classic” control scheme in the game, you might use the d-pad instead of the joystick (which was shit in the way it wore out though). Most games did use the joystick, but not all, and not all the time.
I think the reasoning was to have more adaptability in traditional Nintendo sort of way.
Also, the Dreamcast controller looks very weird as well, has less buttons and came out two years after.