I am a huge fan of the Nintendo 64 as I'm sure many of you out there are as well. But guys, that Nintendo 64 controller, not the greatest thing on the market. It's actually pretty bad in many respects. There's not really one way to hold the controller, and in many instances the controller itself just ages terribly. You see at the time it was a very cool controller to have, but we had far better controllers in the years to come. The Super Nintendo controller and the NES controller are hallmarks in classic designs but the N64 controller really hasn't stood the test of time. But there's a company out there named Hori and they thought the same way I did. They saw that the controller could have probably been improved a bit and they decided to do it. This is the Hori Pad Mini 64, and it is the best controller ever made for the Nintendo 64.
When the folks at Hori were designing this controller they did something pretty smart. They took everything that worked with the initial design of the N64, and compressed it down into a much smaller form-factor and the end result is something that kind of looks like a miniature GameCube controller. Which is pretty awesome seeing as how I really like the design of the GameCube controller. Now before we go any further let’s take a closer look at the original design for the Nintendo 64 controller. Now this controller is pretty iconic. I grew up with it, and I got used to using it over the years but it really isn't the best design out there. Most people that play games usually have their left or right hand around the middle portion so that you can move around the joystick and hit the Z button pretty easily. That's unfortunate because no matter which hand you put in the center you're always going to be missing either touching the A and B buttons or the D-pad making it a lot more difficult to reach all the buttons in the other areas of this controller. This made things a little more difficult for developers. A developer would look at this controller and go "Well, I guess the people that are gonna be playing the game have to hold it this way, or this way.", so they have to design using one side of the controller or the other. But when the Hori guys were designing their controller, they figured out a way to move everything all together so it was a lot easier to use and at the same time improving the joystick.
The Hori Pad Mini 64 is a lot smaller than the original Nintendo 64 controller and all the face buttons are a lot more compressed and closer together but they did that for a reason. See on the original Nintendo 64 controller there really wasn't one way to hold it, but this one there's only one way and this way works far better than any other method for the initial Nintendo 64 controller’s release. Now what I love about this is that the D-pad is kind of in a weird spot by first looks but it actually is in a really smart spot because you can use it with both of your thumbs at any given moment which is actually really nice. What I love about the joystick on this is that the joystick itself is the GameCube variant of the joystick. At least, that's what it feels like anyway. So it's a lot more precise and it doesn't really have a deadzone like you'd find off of older Nintendo 64 controllers or even new ones after a couple of days of use, which eventually got that deadzone naturally. This controller is so much better in almost every single aspect that even the start button is a smaller rubber button that feels better than the original Nintendo 64 controller’s start button. I know that's kind of weird to say, the start button is better than that one, but it just is. Another feature I absolutely love about this controller is they repositioned the Z button. In fact, they kind of redesigned the Z button. On the original N64 controller it was sort of a trigger on the back of the thing but on this one they've offered one beneath the left and right shoulder buttons, both of them! You get two Z buttons! And the reason they did that was because if you were a left handed or right handed player, you'd just get to choose whichever you want to use. Plus, if there's certain games out there where you have to quickly tap the Z button, it was a little bit more difficult to do that on the back of the controller. With this though it's a lot faster. Sure, not every game out there needs that but I think that's really cool.
I know I'm supposed to highlight some kind of criticism I have with this controller. Something that just kind of didn't work. But honestly I really couldn't find one. Best I could do was say that the shoulder buttons were kind of squishy and even then that's not a very serious criticism because they still worked a lot better than the original N64 shoulder buttons. This controller is seriously that good. It is the most perfect controller ever released on the N64. One problem you might have is if you go out and try to find these things right now they can cost upwards of $100 just for one, which is insane, but that's kind of how they go. These controllers are expensive, and they're only going to get more expensive as time goes on because they're better than the original N64 controllers that were ever released by Nintendo. It's not even up for debate. If you compared every single feature of the original N64 controller released with this one this one wins on every single front. In fact even at its most basic functionality, the rumble pack works a lot better in this controller than it does with the original N64 controller. There's no wiggle or give. This thing just feels solid and flush which is crazy because you would think that Nintendo would have done this better than Hori. But Hori just went the extra mile and made that work even better than Nintendo did. This controller is insane, and there's a reason why people want so much money for it. If you can find one of these you’ll find that games you’re used to playing on the N64 will just work better. In some cases, I was playing games that I wasn't good at with the original N64 controller and found that I actually was pretty good at them with this controller setup and design. It's crazy! This cannot be a real thing, but it totally is. If you have any game out there for the N64 that you're a big fan of and you haven't played it with this controller, well you probably never played the game for real before.
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