As part of the new documentary series Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story, which recently released over on Crackle, the show dives deep on the history of Nintendo, as expected. There are plenty of folks interviewed for the documentary series, but one of the most interesting has to be Xbox boss Phil Spencer. At one point in the series, Spencer talks about the controller for the Nintendo 64, and while he has plenty of nice things to say about, for example, the Nintendo Wii, it sounds like he's still not sure what was going on with Nintendo when they designed that controller.

"I still don’t understand the [Nintendo 64] controller, just being honest," Spencer states at one point in Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story. "I guess it’s multiple controllers in one, but you needed three hands to play that!"

And, to be fair, Spencer isn't voicing a terribly unpopular opinion. The Nintendo 64 controller has a somewhat odd, curved arrow design with three distinct handholds, one of them right down the middle with a joystick in the center of it. While you could ostensibly hold just the two for any given video game, there are buttons all across the thing, which makes using all of them awkward, to say the least.

Five episodes of Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story are currently streaming on Crackle.



Posted: Mar 09, 2021 9:33 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/xbox-phil-spencer-nintendo-64-controller/