Super Mario 64

The photographer adjusted the focus and pressed the shutter in rapid succession. "It looks a little like Sega Jupiter's layout, but it's different. Jupiter has dual sticks centered symmetrically, while Nintendo's is an asymmetrical design."

Shigeru Miyamoto watched the reactions of the crowd below the stage.

For this controller, over the past year, the conference rooms of Nintendo Kyoto Headquarters Development Department No. 2 and the Entertainment Analysis & Development Division had never stopped ringing with arguments.

The earliest proposal had been the design known as the "Trident."

A central grip with a stick, and a grip on each side with a D-pad and buttons.

The original intent had been to make it compatible with traditional 2D games and future 3D games, letting players change their grip according to the type of game.

When they had just settled on this design, Sega Jupiter was released.

Its design, with dual sticks centered, plus the exceptionally excellent control logic of several major first-party launch titles, taught the entire industry a lesson.

Players did not need to keep switching how they held the controller when playing different games.

One reasonable ergonomic design was enough to handle the vast majority of situations.

Shigeru Miyamoto got his hands on the Jupiter controller and played with it for an entire weekend.

On Monday morning, he charged straight into Masayuki Uemura's office and said that, compared with the Jupiter controller, this Trident-layout controller was a little less than excellent.

Facing the Trident controller that already had an engineering prototype, Masayuki Uemura was caught in a dilemma for a time.

The two of them drew countless proposals in front of the whiteboard, arguing until their faces were flushed and their ears were red.

Shigeru Miyamoto insisted that the Trident design required players to change their grip midway through