Top 5 Worst Video Game Controllers

The key to every video game console is how the player is able to interact with it. This makes the controller design a crucial factor in a console’s hardware development. Brilliant designs such as Sony’s DualShock have proven that they can carry themselves across generations of platforms. However, most other companies have not been so lucky. Here are the five biggest design failures…

#5 - Nintendo 64

While not the very first controller to ever sport an analog directional stick, it certainly made the feature a necessary standard for modern gaming. But why did it need an extra grip? Good job, Nintendo…You’ve just designed a controller that’s perfect for three-handed people.

The inclusion of an accessory port in the controller was an interesting addition, but heaven help you if you wanted to use a memory card and a Rumble Pak at the same time. Nintendo tried to cash in on the add-on sales that Sony was enjoying from their memory cards, but after enough outcries from its customers, they remembered that game progress can be saved directly on a game cartridge.

#4 - Dreamcast

I hate to talk trash about my homeboys at Sega, but they dropped the ball on the Dreamcast controller. It’s almost like they tried to improve on all the features of the N64 controller that didn’t work without a glance at all the features of the DualShock that did work. Having two slots instead of one did allow for multiple peripherals to be used at the same time, and the VMU memory cards were a clever way to expand on the gameplay, but it all made the controller too bulky. And they had yet to make the rumble feature built in!

#3 - Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy, to the core of its nature, is a crime against gaming. Its controller design did not help matters. By using two directional pads, Nintendo hoped to transport controllers into the third dimension. In theory, each pad would control either the horizontal or vertical axes, which would make movement within a 3D environment a breeze…until you needed to also press the A or B buttons. This posed quite the challenge for those without a second thumb on either hand. This further supports the question of just exactly how many limbs do Nintendo’s designers have?

#2 - Jaguar

The Jaguar was a bold attempt from Atari to lead the pack out of the 16-bit era and into the next generation of gaming. Alas, the console crashed and burned from a total lack of third-party support and its CD-ROM add-on made it look like a toilet.

Its controller was no work of art, either. At first glance, it appears to be reminiscent of a very basic control pad. But as your eyes scan downward, you’ll notice the curious presence of a number pad. Number pad? It’s understandable that Atari wanted to be prepared for the advancement of more complicated controls, but there’s nothing less ergonomic than a telephone-style number pad. They can’t even be considered revolutionary since number pads had been abandoned from video game controllers in the late 1970s.

Which brings us to the top of our countdown…

#1 - Intellivision

In the mid-1970s, most home video game consoles only had one game built into them with controllers that catered to that game’s unique needs. The industry knew they had to stretch out beyond just producing clones of Pong. With that, they needed to design controllers that you could use for multiple types of games on a single machine. The trouble was that they had no idea what that meant. Since the only other television-related control devices that had come before were TV remotes, that meant video game controllers were adorned with number pads.

The worst controllers to come from this Golden Age of gaming come from the Intellivision. What made this controller so bad wasn’t its number pad, it was its golden directional disc. This disc was capable of 16 directions of movement, which one would think to be impressive over the current 8-direction standard. However, detection of the movement was so shoddy, it became a headache (and thumbache) in trying to control any game! Atari and ColecoVision would later mimic the Intellivision’s design, but had the sense of replacing the disc with an actual joystick and moving it to the top of the controller where it’s more comfortable to use.