Editorial Reviews
The controller for the Nintendo 64 was designed to be held in several different positions. It could be held by the two outer grips, allowing use of the digital D-pad, right-hand face buttons and the "L" and "R" shoulder buttons (but not the "Z" trigger or analog stick). It could be also held by the center and right-hand grip, allowing the use of the single analog stick, the right hand-buttons, the "R" shoulder button, and the "Z" trigger on the rear (but not the "L" shoulder button or D-pad). Finally, it could be held entirely by the left or right hand by the center grip, allowing it to be held like a pistol for FPS games.[citation needed] More often than not the analog stick was used in games while in some, both the analog stick and directional pad could be interchangeable (ex: Mortal Kombat Trilogy). Very few games used the directional pad exclusively; two examples are the 3D puzzle game Tetrisphere and the side-scrolling platformer Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. The controller also included four "C buttons", which were originally intended to control the camera in the N64's three dimensional environments. However, since the pad only contained three other face buttons, the C-buttons often became assigned to ulterior functions. An example of this is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where the C-buttons can be assigned to secondary items and the "Z"-trigger is used to orient the camera. One game, Robotron 64 allowed one player to use two controllers to control his avatar. This way the game played like its predecessor, Robotron 2084. The controller initially came only in gray, but other hues were released later on, many of them coinciding with the release of a similarly designed system. Some include: black, red, green, yellow, blue, atomic purple, and special edition colors like gold.
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