Tiers of the Kingdom: Controllers

All right, team.

We here at Apple are attempting a console.

Now, I know this is a market that we have not yet conquered, but I think we can do it.

And the way we're going to do it is we're going to have the best game controller on the market.

So, I want everyone's ideas.

How can we innovate in this space?

How can we come up with a game input method that's even better than everything else out there?

Well, Tim Apple, my uh not my name, but please continue.

I just want to say I'm a big fan of you and your company.

I think, you know, it's terrible what happened to Steve Jubs, but I'm also happy that you did it to him.

I want to talk to you about some of my controller ideas.

My name is Dougett.

And the first pitch I have is that there's not a lot of tactile feedback in controllers.

Okay.

You know, you got that force feedback, but you don't got tactile feedback.

So what I would suggest is, and I've got a demo here, I've put two wires in the bottom of a can of applesauce.

And I think that you should be able to like, so you know, like in a game where you're like trying to find something in the ground or in a treasure chest or whatever?

Kind of.

Yeah.

So you're like, oh, where is it?

So you scoop into the applesauce and you swoosh around in there and you can clear off the screen that you're looking at.

And it's a tactile experience.

So we're shipping a jar of applesauce with our console?

No, I don't think it should be applesauce.

I think it should be whatever.

Well, I mean, it does tie in thematically.

So maybe

if it's apple, it should be applesauce.

Applesauce.

I mean, look, we're just pitching ideas here, so I'll put this one on the whiteboard.

But I think basically

go with.

Hello, my friend.

Hello.

I got a couple ideas for you

if you want to

see what I got.

Thank you.

Thanks to both of you for showing up to

this meeting.

Yeah, no, I'm happy to be here.

I don't technically work here, so this is an opportunity.

No, yeah, I'm just trying to get my ideas out there.

I think it should be shaped like a gun for playing

first-person shooter games

for any kind of game.

Any game.

You should be able to play, you should be able to point a gun at your TV

and play any kind of game you want.

Okay, so we're thinking some sort of form factor where we have

please put that away.

That's it should look exactly appropriate.

Okay, these are both.

I'll put this on the whiteboard gun controller, but again, I think let's start in a more conventional place.

Let's think of something that you're holding with both hands, it has buttons, it has tactility.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, no, tactility.

That's what I brought up with applesauce, but I guess you're just gonna bypass it.

Well, no, I brought the applesauce idea down.

All right, so how about this?

How about this?

You

got two hands, but you also got a mouth so what if there is you holding a controller you got two hands but it's like uh oh my my character is tied to a chair how do i get out this is a a a a a nub

like a big rubber nub on the top of the controller here i'll demonstrate so i brought in a nintendo that i've just taped like a pickle to and i okay please do not demonstrate i don't want no one wants to see this demonstration

Please.

So as he's showing us, like, it's like, uh-oh, my hands are tied.

I can't get out.

I had a similar idea for the gun one.

I don't think we should be encouraging people to put a gun-like object in their mouth.

And I also don't think there's, I also don't think that they're.

But it would be rubber and wet.

Again,

this all sounds really unappealing.

All controllers since the dawn of time have been dry.

And we're not...

there's a whole space where we could be thinking about

what's new and what's interesting.

And I think that's wet.

Yeah, wet controller.

We're only at idea three here, so don't sound too tired.

Yeah, no, I'm just going to write wet on the whiteboard, and then I'm just going to press send on this email submitting my resignation

because this is obviously a completely dysfunctional workplace.

Have you heard of Teledildonyx?

Okay.

All I'm leaving.

I'm going to push you aside.

I'll grab your gun if needed.

I just am leaving this office.

I have some literature for you.

If you would just take a peruse this.

I've gone.

I've left the office.

Bye.

We wiggle our C-sticks and charge our VMUs as we make our video game controller tier list this week on Get Played.

Hello.

My fans are frozen.

In some ways,

I can free now.

Is anyone out there?

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back, Bucket, to the premiere gaming podcast.

Should we start calling this a AAA gaming podcast?

Oh, I love it.

Or AAA.

The AAA.

AAA gaming podcast.

We're an S-tier AAA.

It's fitting for today's theme that we're an S-tier podcast.

But we cannot help you with roadside assistance, so stop asking.

Matt, not that kind of AAA.

Y'all got that?

Y'all got triple-A?

What do you got?

I do.

I do, yeah.

With my nightmare car, I do.

I love it.

Which, by the way, this morning I tried to start my car for the first time in three months.

Battery's dead.

Oh, yeah.

And then

I was like, well, I'll close the garage door.

Garage door broke.

Oh, boy.

Then I was like, okay.

So there was like a cascade of failure.

So then I went to pull the garage door closed and the handle on the garage door snapped off

and a bunch of red dust came out of it.

And I was like, red?

Red?

Red dust.

Red dust.

Do you think it's the salt from that planet from the last Jedi?

Great question, Matt.

That is not a great.

Do you think it was?

Yes or no?

I don't She's sweating Why she has no idea.

I'm not sweating.

I'm not sweating

So it sounds like Heather's having a case of the Monday

And but because right before this right before we recorded Heather got herself lunch.

That's true.

And you know what?

She got the wrong they gave her the wrong thing and she took the wrong lunch.

Oh, this has all been the same day.

Yeah, Heather said that that was like the last straw.

I was like, it seems like kind of like a crazy thing for it to be the last thing.

I already had a a day

I ordered a ham sandwich opened the bag later and had a hand pie yeah a peach hand pie you said ham sandwich they heard hand sandwich

and they mistook sandwich for pie

thank you for listening to the premiere AAA video game podcast where we spend the first

couple of minutes of the show complaining about mundane problems.

I can keep going off.

I mean,

would we be gamers if we weren't complaining about mundane problems that don't really affect us?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm glad that we don't complain about the things that normal gamers complain about.

Oh, I got some of those.

Oh,

okay.

Interesting.

Okay.

Cool.

That's cool.

That's cool and good.

You know what?

This month's We Play, You Play.

Now, that's a format where we talk about one game at length, and it's always the final episode of each month if you're new to the podcast.

Well, this month we're talking about Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, the DLC that just came out.

We're going to release that episode on Monday, October 30th.

So look forward to to that and play along if you like.

How far into...

So I'm restarting.

Yes.

How far into the game is Phantom Liberty?

It's a new area.

So I don't know if there's another, like, if there's a set number of hours in which it's like unlocked, but I think you have to get through the extended prologue.

You know, the prologue is pretty lengthy in order to have access to that game area.

But there's like a new part of the map that's basically the designated Phantom Liberty zone.

I saw on X

that

there's like a phone call you get from a new NPC that like starts these Phantom Liberty quests.

Do you have any idea when that is?

No, I mean, this is the thing.

Like,

I'm not in the Phantom Liberty stuff yet.

I'm like, I'm actively,

I was actively avoiding it for this episode because I was

talking about the non-phantom liberty aspects of it.

All right.

My understanding is that it's like there's an area of the map called either Dogville or Dog Town or something, and that's where all this transpires.

I don't think we should talk about Cyberpunk 2077 at all until the episode well that's all i have to talk about today well that's on you no we're gonna talk no i thought we were gonna talk about 2.0 today

i think we have a topic but that's part of what we're gonna but when we talk about what we're playing that's what i was gonna be playing i think we'll be checking in on cyberpunk a little bit all month yeah but phantom liberty we'll have a designated phantom liberty zone that'll be like we'll talk about the dlc and sure that'll some of that will bleed into 2.0 but i think we've talked about this we've talked about this game before yeah we talked about this before.

Yeah.

I just don't know.

Are we, I'm concerned about the amount of content we will have for our Phantom Liberty episode.

How much we just did on fucking sandwiches will be fine.

Yeah, you let me cook.

I'll be talking all goddamn day.

I wish you'd cooked me lunch.

I would have made you freaking hand pie is what I would have made you.

Heather brought up the

new commercial for

the Phantom Liberty in

that group chat.

And I don't know if you've seen it.

It's really funny.

It's fucking great.

We should watch it together right now.

Throw it on.

I'll toss it on.

What a great idea.

It's the new commercial starring Idris Elba, who I believe is also in Phantom Liberty.

Yes.

As an as an actor.

And it has the funniest.

Like the end slogan for

the commercial is like,

it's fantastic.

It is a self-acknowledgement of cyberpunk's problematic past and a guiding light, a North Star for its positive future.

They're like, How do we, how do we, how do we solve this?

Let's get the most handsome man alive to say stuff about it.

Here we here we go.

Here's Idra Zelba and the commercial for Cyberpunk

inspired at John M.

Oh, shit.

In 2077, how do you win when a deck is stacked against you?

You go all in.

In Night City, the rules are different.

The stakes are higher.

One wrong move is all it takes to get burned.

If you want to hold the winning hand, you need to become stronger,

faster,

better.

So who you know and who you can trust,

that's the ace up your sleeve.

The more you have, the more you stand to lose.

So go ahead and play.

Just don't forget.

The game is fixed.

The game is fixed.

Is fixed.

Very clever.

So funny.

Yeah.

Like, the fact that that's even allowed.

I love the idea that some copywriter got like this assignment and was like, so I have to convey that the game is fixed.

And they're like, Yeah, we want to make sure that the, that, the,

because there's this like

idea that cyberpunk is not

like a busted game where cars fall out of the sky.

Certainly was at launch, yeah.

And I hope that that copywriter was like, oh, the game is fixed, means more than one thing,

wrote it, and did like four shots of whiskey and fell asleep.

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All right, well, we're going to be talking about Phantom Liberty Liberty specifically later this month, but right now we're going to be talking about some other games that we're playing.

Maybe that includes Cyberpunk in its more vanilla state.

The question I have to ask everyone is: what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, Nick, why don't you go first?

Why don't we start with a Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update discussion?

Because that came out last week after we recorded our most recent episode.

And again, we're not going to talk about the DLC, but we'll just talk about the update, which is substantial.

And I would say, very fun.

I mean, like, like, I'm having a blast going through it.

I think the thing that, you know, I was impressed by is that I feel like in the launch version of the game, which we all played during the launch window and was updated some during that stretch.

And, you know, I finished that game.

We all finished that game.

Yeah.

But this is like a much more complete version that also the big, a big issue with, I feel like, playing.

the OG cyberpunk is that walking around the open world, it kind of felt a little bit desolate and barren and depopulated, and like nothing was really happening.

Like it didn't really feel like a real environment.

And I feel like they've done a lot to correct that in terms of just having more NPC behaviors and animations.

So that is great.

But I will also say, and I think a big part of this is just the in-house red engine they built that they are abandoning on future projects.

I think

it's still a little bit more glitchy and less polished than I expected for like a big, like, this is the 2.0 update.

And our marketing is saying the game is fixed.

You know, I'm still encountering like, you know, a floating NPC here and there.

And it's just like, like, you know,

but I do admire all of the additional stuff they've thrown into it.

Having been away from Cyberpunk for a year or two,

however long it is, one year?

Has it only been one year?

It's been three.

I think this game came out in 2019.

Isn't that wild?

What?

No.

Is it long about that?

No, no, no.

It came out post-pandemic.

It came out in 2020.

2020.

Okay.

Yeah.

Jesus.

So it's been three years since I've been to Night City.

And I'm.

My first impression, because it's also the first time I've played the PS5 version.

Yes.

I'm playing on PC, by the way.

And I think I'm playing on the same video card as I did when it released, but it looks a lot better.

Sorry, keep going.

Beautiful.

It's gorgeous.

They've done a lot with the lighting in particular, but they've also, you know, reworked.

It feels like they've reworked some of the character models.

Like Judy in particular, who's one of the romanceable NBCs, like and and i've seen some side-by-side videos these effects but like like look at her uh model in this new version and the way she's lit it's just like it's such a stark improvement yeah uh i did yeah i i did catch a t-pose from uh from a character uh in the game still but i'm having a blast with it yeah that's that's the thing that i'm just still and i'm you know like i i got a 3070 i got a decent video card but i'm still like getting like

just weird things like when i go into the map screen i go full screen of the map screen and i'm scrolling it, I get like huge frame drops, which I'm just like, it's just again, it's just a little bit, I was expecting like this is gonna be, this game is gonna feel relatively glitch-free, but I feel like I'm encountering that pretty regularly.

And also, just speaking of the NPC

civilians, I'm routinely encountering just like the same character models, even like standing side by side.

And, you know, again, it's, it's all fine.

I'm feeling very positive about the game.

I'm having a blast with it, but you still just are noticing those things, especially with the game coming in

having its previous state.

I'm stoked that driving feels better.

Driving does feel better, yeah.

It feels a little more how I'd like it to, closer to like the like GTA 5 driving, I think is maybe the gold standard in a game like that.

But

I had started a new save

earlier this year, and I didn't get very far.

And I

now with the 2.0 patch, I just started completely new because that's what they were recommending.

Me too.

And I caught up to where I was in my previous new save.

And even in the little bit that I did,

encounters have been

similar, but there have been other things I've been able to do now that were just completely new to me that I was just so like, I couldn't believe.

I'm so excited about.

What kind of build are you playing?

Well, I started as a corpo and I want to try hacking.

I didn't really do hacking.

There was a lot of stuff that I didn't do the first time that I played.

I just didn't prioritize the hacking skill at all.

I was more of like a,

I was a bit of a cyber psycho almost.

I would just go in and start guns blazing, start chopping people up with swords.

I had a, yeah, it was like a gun and katana build is what I was mostly doing.

Okay, okay.

But I wanted, I want to do hacking this time because it seems like it would be pretty, pretty fun

for me to do.

And,

but I do have a katana.

And like, the thing is, once you get a katana, it's kind of the only thing you want to do.

It's so fun.

Yeah, so I did a guns blazing build last time.

And I also did a

I also played a male V.

So I was like, I'm going to do something different.

And I went with a female V and then I'm also

building my character around the katana.

And

the, you know, like, like, like, there's, it feels like there's a lot of new stuff in terms of mobility.

Maybe some of this was in there and I just didn't explore it.

But because the skill tree is completely different, there's a whole thing now with like how dashing

I've I got the upgrade that you know makes it so that my dash is replaced or maybe the thing is replaced with is called the dash, but it's replaced with something where I have like a, you know,

just a super fast zoom towards something and I can zoom forward and I can zoom forward towards enemy specifically and you can combo that with a katana slash.

So it feels like I'm kind of like this dude fucking zooming around, just slicing people up.

And it is a very fun way to play.

And I'll also say that, you know, I played mouse and keyboard my first go-round, but I'm playing with a controller this time on PC, and it does feel a little bit better, you know?

So, yeah, I think they've definitely done a lot of gameplay tweaks just to make that all a little bit more engaging.

My playthrough the first time was Netrunner, and I was a street kid Netrunner and

famously

for the podcast famously,

was jumping into an area and spreading the suicide virus to everybody and this watching like an entire group of people kill themselves.

Yeah.

This time,

and I, and I was so heavy on Netrunner that I, I almost didn't shoot anybody

first round.

Yeah.

Because I was like, oh, this, I want to be effectively a psychic.

And this time I'm going full blunt melee.

Uh, and immediately and the first thing I unlocked was the sledgehammer perk.

Oh, yeah.

Where you run at somebody and they explode.

That's that's great.

Yeah.

That's really good.

That's a totally different experience of the game for me.

Last time I was street kid, this time I'm corpo.

It's funny to think of a corpo with a sledgehammer.

Yeah.

I went from I was corpo and now I'm street kid.

So that's the playthrough I'm doing.

And I'm also playing like, I'm just picking all of the aggressive dialogue options, which I normally don't do in a game, which is fun because

it's just a nice to say someone like, the fuck you looking at, you know, like something I would never say.

You should give it a try.

It's kind of funny for you.

Next time you're at Sprouts, the person making your sandwich, what the fuck you looking at?

I get sledgehammered.

But okay, but so all that is great.

And I think that the, I like great walking around, great.

The driving around is much improved.

I still don't feel it.

It feels great, but it feels a lot better.

The combat is really fun.

The skill tree is completely overhauled.

The UI looks a lot better.

And also just like the way they have changed clothing to be purely aesthetic.

I really appreciate that you don't have like an armor rating in your booty shorts, but it's all just like whatever you want to wear and then and all the armor value comes from your cyberwear.

I'm confused.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

No, I just, I like that all that's in there.

Yeah, I love those changes.

I haven't.

gotten anywhere where like is there at all an armor class or is it all just it's inside it's in cyberwear yeah you can get like you can get like a carapace or something or you can get like just whatever implant you get may have a little bit of an armor rating

and my understanding is there are certain items of clothing like boots and vests that you can get that may have some like small gain, small boost to your armor, but it's like not like a thing you have to really think about.

It makes so much more sense to have that system be in cyberwear and not in

like a tank top.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and also because you just get to dress like a fucking lunatic, which is part of the fun of inhabiting this world is just, you know, building your character to look insane and then dressing them up like a freak.

There's some things about this game that I don't remember and I'm a little confused.

I, so you encounter the police and they're having like a shoot shoot down with, I don't know, the

street gang.

Yeah.

And the police all have little blue arrows over their heads and then the street gang have like those little red eyes, right?

And I thought, if I kill the gangs, the cops aren't going to give a shit.

Oh, no.

That's not what happens.

Yeah, the cops get mad at you for getting

they're trying to kill those guys.

And yeah, you're trying to help them.

It makes sense.

You'd think that they would be like, hey, thanks for the help.

I don't remember that being the case.

They've tweaked a lot of the police behavior and they've tweaked a lot of those encounters and a lot of just like the stuff you'll stumble upon is, that's more content that's been overhauled.

In the tutorial, it says, as you pass your first street encounter, it's your choice whether to get involved or not.

But apparently, all involvement ends in police stars.

I think it depends on the encounter, it depends on what you do, but also, like, I'm just ignoring all that shit because I don't care.

Like, I just don't care about getting into random combat encounters and going around.

Yeah, I'm not trying to help the police.

Well, that's another thing.

So,

this is the thing, like, all that said, all this, this praise, despite the glitches, uh, you know, dispensed, I still am getting reminded of like the stuff that annoyed me about the game initially.

And a lot of that is, you know, I think that the storytelling is good, and and I think the characters are well drawn.

And I think the

I think that the narrative design is oftentimes really effective, but some of the dialogue I don't love.

It's like a little corny and a little bit laden with cliché.

Some of that could have been, could just be because it's an English as a second language issue.

But there's also just like the kind of

bad GTA style comedy, like the NPC who's named Mr.

Hands.

I'm just like, oh yeah, there's a fucking Mr.

Hands joke in this.

Like that stuff, it's just all kind of eye-rolly to me.

And so that's another thing that I kind of have to look past.

And

whatever updates they do to the content, that's still just like a presence of it.

So I love looking at the world aesthetically, but like some of that shit I feel like is just a, it's just kind of a thud for me.

And then also speaking of which, the there is still a lot of copaganda in this, which really contrasts with Edge Runner's approach to police, where they're just, you know, fucking evil and being massacred by the bucketful.

But there's still like,

you know, just like

a very early quest.

And I overall like the quest.

It's the Andrew quest.

It's the guy who's in his apartment and he's shut in and he's depressed.

Right.

And you go and he's lost a friend who's died and you have to look into that.

It's a very satisfying reveal who his friend is if you go to find his grave.

And it's also a great way to open up the world to make you go to this remote gravesite.

But it's two cops and they're talking about their cop friend who's depressed and they're like he's a good cop we got to help him and me i'm a street kid who's got attitude i and they're like we're worried he's suicidal i what i want to say in character is good i hope he kills himself and that's cyberpunk like i hope this cop blows his brains out i'm a street kid i don't have that option i'm gonna i have to do the quest and then i'm told like i'm a good person by the police yeah at the end of it it's just it's it all that is just feels kind of authoritarian and counter to uh the game's other uh the more nihilistic impulse.

Can't you kill those two cops?

You can just kill them.

I mean, I guess.

Right.

Well,

I guess that's an option.

Yeah.

But I'm saying, like, look, within the dialogue,

I feel like there should be a middle ground within the dialogue.

You know, there should be an option to role play that.

Yeah.

You want to antagonize them so they pull their guns on you.

Yeah, sure.

And I'm saying you can just.

You can prognosticate that that's going to happen and just pull your gun on them.

Just double tap them from behind.

Yeah.

I do like the stealth in this.

That's another thing.

I've kind of building around stealth a little bit, and it is fun to sneak up on behind people.

And I think all that's been refined a little bit.

Yeah.

And there is a good, like, the stealth in general is like very line of sight, sort of like, like, you can get, you can kind of lose.

You can lose your tail pretty easily

if you're trying hard enough.

Yeah, and there's also perks that you can, or things you can get in the skill tree that let you reset

your stealth based on certain abilities or

get your

what's the word I'm looking for?

I don't know.

Get the fucking stealth back.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Stealth meter?

Yeah, stealth meter, whatever it is.

Oh, stamina.

Yeah, whatever.

No, I'm not saying I'm just saying stamina.

You're stealthiness.

Everyone can see you and then you can disappear again.

They can't see you again.

Yeah, whatever.

Some word like that.

Wait, what's the word?

You fucking whatever it's that's the word whatever

this this is how it feels nick

i but but here's the thing i legitimately don't know you know okay

uh you're playing metal gear solid yeah you're walking around

yeah exactly that sound it plays the guards are alerted they're pursuing you and then you duck into a locker uh you close it on uh behind you and then you evade them for long enough where everything resumes and then that counter sort of starts down

yeah i know what you're talking about but reset your stealth i don't know what the word i'm looking for is yeah i don't know either but i know what you're talking about now wow yeah this was a needless business i don't know that there's a word for resetting stealth like losing your tail kind of like uh yeah yeah because like because like in the real world that doesn't apply you don't regain stealth so you don't have that like you can't say oh good i'm stealth again yeah yeah if there was like a guy in the office who just sort of walked by with like a gun like holy shit Like, look at that guy.

And then no, like, if you like hid in a cardboard box for a second, we'd be like, well, I guess that guy is gone.

We wouldn't do that.

We'd keep looking for him because it's a video.

I wouldn't look.

I'm leaving.

I wouldn't know.

I'd get the fuck out of here.

I'm out of here.

I'd try and be a hero.

You could stop him.

Yeah.

Sledgehammer his ass.

I learned a thing about Vikings.

Oh,

is this the part of the podcast where I talk about Vikings?

Yeah, of course.

Go for it.

I learned about the truth of berserker Vikings.

So there were soldiers, and then there were berserkers.

And berserkers were naked guys who would show up, who would show up on the battlefield, and both the allies and the people on the other side would be like, it's these fucking dudes.

They may or may not, probably not, but may have been on a huge amount of hallucinogens.

But they would rush the enemy in such a fevered rage that when the enemies, like the, like, we have writings in the Byzantine Empire, and they're like, These fucking guys are insane.

The Vikings fight with these other dudes who are crazy.

Sometimes they wear a wolf mask.

That's cool.

What were we talking about right before that?

This concept that Nick invented.

Oh,

no, I was going to say, I think, like, if a guy shows up with a gun and hides under a cardboard box, if you take off your shirt and charge him, he's done.

He's like, something is wrong.

I don't know.

If he has a gun, I think he tries to shoot you first.

Really?

I think so.

You think, okay, like philosophically, you think a guy shows up with a gun

and then somebody comes at him who's naked that that guy doesn't hesitate a little bit?

I think he might be like, the fuck?

Maybe just for, is that long enough to keep him from the game?

Yeah,

is that long enough?

Depends.

Don't know.

Depends on the range.

I think then you try to like

shoot the guy's dick dick off or something.

Kind of a different thing to aim at.

Can I point out one more thing, which is that the, I didn't know this, but

if you bought this game, I think, I think on it, if you bought this game anywhere, but I could be wrong, you get a PDF of the Cyberpunk 2020 core rulebook.

Oh, yeah.

That's just a thing you can just download and look at.

And I was looking at a little bit.

That's really kind of an interesting bit of, you know, a tabletop game written in the, in the 1980s, or a PNP game rather, written in the 1980s.

And it's kind of interesting to look through their rule set and see what it has in common with the game that you play today.

I do like

the

new system because like before you can kind of just do whatever you want in Night City, it felt like and no, nobody would come and try to stop you.

But now there is a wanted system.

Maybe is that what you're thinking about?

No, well, yeah, whatever.

Sets your wanted meter.

Maybe you know what?

Honestly, that kind of is pretty close to it.

Yeah, there is that now.

And

I've been enjoying that.

But if we're done kind of talking about Tyrofunk, I have been playing something else that I'd like to share.

Please.

Me too.

I know it was within the last couple of weeks, I said, Apple Arcade,

I don't want games on my phone.

That sounds like something I've said recently.

Yeah, that's something you've said.

Well, I just thought I'd give Apple Arcade a try pretty recently just because I was like, oh, I say all that, but I don't really know what's going on over there.

I have this game.

There's this game on.

Oh, fuck, what's it called?

Oh, I'm not even prepared.

He did.

He doesn't know what game he's playing.

No, I forgot the name of it.

And now I've forgotten.

Is it Matt's little game?

It's Matt's Little Game.

It is called.

Okay.

It's called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Splintered Fate.

And

I like that you couldn't remember the name of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I knew the first part.

It could have started there.

We would have gotten what you meant.

I knew the beginning of it was TMNT.

I knew that part.

But so there's this game on there called.

What the fuck is this game called?

It's called Red Dead Redemption 2.

That's what it was.

It's got these fucking big turtles and they all have different personalities.

I'm fucking lost.

It's a roguelike.

It's a TMNT roguelike.

That's cool.

And it plays like Hades.

And so

you can kind of go through

different little areas, and there's like different enemies in each little area, and you get different boons and stuff like that.

It's a lot easier than Hades.

It's like less involved systems-wise,

but it's it's it's pretty fun.

You can play it on, you know, with the touchscreen, which works great, or you could play it with it.

It works great with the touchscreen.

It works great with the touchscreen.

I have, I very rarely, uh, so far have played it with the backbone attached to it, uh, just because I'm like, oh, I got to pop off my case, got to do all this whole dance.

Yeah, of course.

Play this some little games.

But I have played it with the backbone, and it does, it plays good.

It plays good with the backbone, too.

Like, it's fun both ways.

Yeah.

But more often than not, I'm not snapping it into the backbone.

And I've been enjoying that.

So

I take it back.

There are games on my phone right now.

I don't know for how long, but right now there are games on my phone.

I love to hear it.

Yeah.

So you'd say people should check this out.

I think it's really fun.

I think if you'd like to play,

one, if you like

ninja turtles and i do think

most ninja turtle games are pretty fun because you get to be the ninja turtles that's pretty cool um

boy that's a good are most ninja turtle games fun shredders revenge great uh oh yeah you know tmnc arcade great yeah uh they're most turtles in time is great they're mostly pretty fun but are we just like are we overlooking the because obviously the the nin the ninja turtles nes game which we covered in our own format is basically unplayable there's also a really bad we

I think a Wii TMNT game that sucks.

I remember this.

I think this is a good format for the Turtles.

Because

you only got one.

You can switch.

It's fun.

It's nice.

I don't know.

I think the Turtles are back right now, though, too.

You think the Turtles are back?

The Turtles are back.

I did like that new movie.

I loved it.

They're certainly good.

I haven't seen it yet, but they're certainly back in comic form.

Yeah.

The Last Ronin is an excellent TMNT comic.

Yeah.

Which is about

a world where all the turtles except one is dead and he's getting revenge.

Which one?

That's kind of the thing.

That's kind of the thing.

Oh, you don't know.

Yeah.

Figure it out.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because he's maskless.

You can't.

Oh, so you don't get to, you can't tell by the color of his hair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um,

and they're adapting that into like a God of War style game, I heard.

AAA, like

character action game.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Um, but that's, I, I'm, I'm enjoying tmnt splintered fate on on apple arcade and i'm i'm loving it i i love hearing that sentence come out of matt yeah that's good pretty shocking mr uh i don't want games on my phone i got a game on my phone meanwhile other than cyberpunk i'm playing a game you cannot play on apple products Fortnite.

Wow.

Oh.

Still playing Fortnite back in, like now that I'm back in the States and my ping is good.

I have been playing Fortnite regularly again.

I thought maybe

three months off was going to break my addiction cycle.

Turns out that game's so fucking great and things change so frequently that

you play for a couple of days and you're back in it 100%.

There's a new set of powers based on My Hero Academia,

where you create

ice walls to stop gunfire.

Ice walls.

Ice walls.

Pretty good.

A whole new set of weapons.

It's

fucking good, man.

Fortnite is so good.

Any cyberpunk content?

There isn't cyberpunk content.

Johnny Silverhand should be in Fortnite.

He actually should be in Fortnite.

He's a great call.

The truth is, there hasn't been a lot of

really good Fortnite character drops lately.

At least not ones that overlap with any of my interests.

So

waiting on Lydia Tarr.

Like Lydia, like literally anytime they put in like...

Mike Ermintraut has joined Fortnite.

That would be fucking awesome.

anytime they just like yeah like a a character that's 50 years old or older

like i mean like you know like from a movie from the 70s or the 80s you're like whoo who is this i mean it's great that they're in there well they licensed gene hackman from the french connection

there's the overlap here but yeah back in fortnite i can't wait to uh further connect with the get played battle bus on wow discord discord.gg/slash get played, right?

Yeah, that's right.

All right, great.

Fucking Matt.

I was still looking at the name of that Ninja Turtles game.

Yeah, I was like, hold on, no.

I was looking up, I was going to do a very specific bit that's not even going to be worth it.

It required you to open a browser tab?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is it?

I want it to be Mike Ermintraut saying, like,

all right, Walter, here's what's going to happen.

I'm going to go to Slushy Jr.'s house in Fortnite.

So you're just looking up up a quote?

That's what you're doing?

I was looking up Fortnite specifics that I can maybe have my bad impression of Mike Ermintraut say.

And then

this happened.

Wait, what?

Are you, Matt?

Are you okay?

No.

I don't know what's happening right now.

Brutal Bastion.

There's a reference.

There you go.

Say, say something as Mike Ermentraut.

Get this bit back on the rails about

Brutal Bastion.

Well, the impression is not even

Walter.

Here's what's going to happen.

He always says that says stuff like that.

Okay.

We got to get to Brutal Bastion.

And then we're going to do Fortnite.

I'm going to hit the gritty.

I don't even.

Matt, what the hell are you talking about?

Wait, is that Walter White?

That's pretty good.

Why would he say Matt?

I mean, he says it to Jesse.

Jesse.

Jesus.

Let's cook.

I don't.

This bit is insane.

I think it all makes sense.

I'm Skylar.

Oh, God.

Oh, boy.

Here we go.

Here we go.

The truth is, I'm really happy there isn't a Walter White drop in Fortnite because it would only be Walter White's.

You think so?

Yeah, yeah.

The entire fucking game would be Walter White.

But you think the 11-year-olds want to be Walter White and play this game?

I think so.

Like the moment 40% of the game becomes Walter White's, then everybody's going to be Walter White.

Yeah.

I think they should just go the other way and put Saul.

Put Saul Goodman in the game.

That'd be a lot of fun.

They could put in Bob Odenkirk from nobody.

That would be fitting.

It's an action hero.

Put Bob Odenkirk from any of the Mr.

Show sketches in Fortnite.

Put in Choo Choo the Herky Jerky Dancer from Mr.

Show.

And yeah, I'm very happy that you're still having fun with Fortnite.

Yeah,

it makes me want.

It makes me wish that we were doing October again because I thought not only was October like a fantastic format for us to explore our

boundaries,

but it also introduced me to one of my favorite games of all time.

And I think a second October would have potentially unlocked some

new interest for us.

We could

sweatily put UGG in a different month somewhere.

August.

Yeah, we could always do a different UG.

We'll figure it out.

We could do November.

That's pretty good.

Like, no, I don't want to play it.

Vember.

I mean, I don't want to commit to that right now.

Yeah, it's good.

I can't see.

Yeah, it's good pitch.

I don't know if we're going to do it.

Not until Mike Ermintrauts and Fortnite.

And what would that sound like, just so we know?

Walter, here's what's going to happen.

Here's the thing.

It doesn't sound like it's getting better, but it is.

It is getting better.

You're ruining.

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Let's get into the topic we're going to discuss for the second act here today, which is Tears of the Kingdom, spelled T-I-E-R-S,

for controllers.

We're going to do a tier list for primary pack-in controllers.

So here's what I'm going to say.

First thing, thing, I think this should be consoles, not handhelds.

Like, I think we should just, maybe we can make a Wii U, Steam Deck, Switch exemption, but I don't think we should be talking about like comparing like the Game Boy Micro to an Xbox S controller doesn't make any sense.

No.

The other thing, and I think this is actually borne out by the tier list that Matt picked that we're going to be using as a visual guide here in studio.

I think we should start with the gamepad generation, so like the third console generation and avoid the joysticks, paddles, the Coleco Telstars, the Magnavox Odysseys.

I think that's the right approach.

I think, yeah, if we haven't touched it, we shouldn't, we shouldn't talk about it.

Well, it's also, there's such completely different approaches.

Yeah.

There is a

pack-in controller from the because we're starting with the NES era here.

Yes, that's where we would begin.

And I don't see a Sega master system controller.

Yeah, there should be a master system one there.

Is there not?

There is not.

There is not.

Is a mission.

I will tell you, it's a D tier controller.

It's a little clunky.

I mean, I didn't have a master system, but my friend had one, and I would play it at his house.

And I had a couple of friends with master systems, actually.

And yeah, there was an eight-way

like D-pad, which what you thought was like, oh, this is cool because it's hard to do the corners on the, you know, the NES D-pad, but it actually felt a little bit mushy.

It was mushy as fuck.

And you could like screw a tiny joystick into it.

Oh, that's right.

Like a tiny, tiny, like,

like,

imagine the tip of a

headphone jack

that you could screw into a controller and kind of like mash your thumb.

It hurt.

Yeah, it doesn't sound fun.

It sucked.

Yeah.

You know, whatever.

They were figuring stuff out.

I think that's a fair deal.

I think, I think Master System is a D tier sounds about right.

I'll trust you on that, Heather.

I am going to argue in favor of the NES controller.

I don't think it's the most comfortable controller ever made, but I think it should rate pretty highly because it set the template for the gamepad.

Before that, all of controls were based off of arcade controls, and it was based off of pressing buttons with your fingers and controlling a joystick with your hand.

And the gamepad approach put that with your thumbs.

And it completely changed gaming and it's stayed with us through today.

So to me, the NES slash Famicom controller, which was actually the first gamepad I ever used because we had

my brother's good friend who lived on our block.

His parents were from Japan and they had a Famicom.

And I think both of those controllers are,

is it crazy to say those are A-tier controllers?

I know they're not as good as modern controllers, but I kind of want to appreciate them for history's sake.

I think it belongs in A.

I think, yeah, you can.

You can't get to some of these later ones without this design because, yeah, like you said,

it put it in your hand.

Yeah.

I've pulled up a pretty robust secondary controller map here

to look at in case we

skip or forget any.

This is great because you got like things like the NES Advantage there, like peripherals, but then you've also got, you know, ones like the Atari Jaguar controller or the Saturn 3D orb controller.

Remember that big fucking hockey puck thing?

Yep.

I don't know what that was called.

Wow.

I think it was just called the 3D controller.

That's great.

Yeah.

But we'll, okay, so we'll settle NES.

What do you think, Heather?

Where do you want to sit that bad boy?

What, the NES?

We could go down to B.

No, it's an A.

Okay, we'll put that in A.

Master System in D.

That brings us to, and that's it for the 8-bit gen, right?

Yes, because we aren't covering the Atari 7800 Joypad, the NES Advantage, the NES Max.

I had both of those, by the way.

The NES Advantage?

I had the NES Advantage and the Max.

I was so excited about the Max because I was like, it's got a turbo button.

I thought it was so cool.

I think I got it for like a birthday one day.

What does a turbo button do?

You could just hold down the A button and it would press it repeatedly.

You wouldn't have to mash it.

Nice.

Okay.

That's cool.

Yeah.

That's an A.

Yeah, but it also, like,

no, I mean, it wasn't, that was not an A controller.

It was on an A tier controller.

Those, those are both kind of clucky.

All right, let's move on to the 16-bit era.

So we've got the Sega Genesis.

And I think think they're i don't know if they both are represented in this graphic but i think we should talk about both the three button and the six button

um

i'll let you start this one heather wait there was a am i am i misremembering there was a six oh yeah i remember now okay uh the sega genesis three button pad which by the way you know Sega Genesis is released before Super Nintendo.

So when this controller comes out, people are like, oh, shit, it's got three buttons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's like a pretty big deal.

It's been wild.

Like, oh man, there's three different things you could do.

That being said, it is a, it is a chunky controller.

Yes.

Thick.

And

because Nintendo owns the patent on D-pad,

like it still has a slightly different

input

system on its face.

I think that the, as much as I was a Sega kid and loved the Genesis, I think the Genesis pad is

C tier.

The other thing about that is that, yes, it is chunky, but it also kind of sits in your fingers.

It isn't quite substantial enough to like sit in the palms of your hands.

At least, you know, that's my memory of it.

And so, yeah, I think that's a fair rating.

Also, just three, three buttons in a row isn't the most ergonomic, you know, setup.

But then when Street Fighter comes out,

everybody needs a six-button controller or a six-button joystick.

They sure do.

And so Sega Genesis comes out with a six-button controller, controller, and that controller is fucking great.

Yeah, that was a great gamepad.

It is not on our

map that we're using, but I do want to shout it out as an absolute A-tier

controller.

I'm in favor of that, and it also is kind of the same.

Like, how different was it from the Saturn controller?

It was very similar.

Very similar.

So, I mean, I think those are both good controllers, certainly for 2D games.

And so, yeah, I definitely am in favor of that.

Should we talk with Super Nintendo slash Super Famicom?

Yep.

I love this controller.

I think that the advent of shoulder buttons, as like the advent of the gamepad itself, it deserves like a little bit of a boost for that.

I also think the, you know, the

layout of four buttons that are at an angle so you can press two at once is something that has endured.

We've seen that with the that was emulated with the PlayStation controller and with the

Xbox controller.

And so,

and also people get a retro pad nowadays.

It'll oftentimes just be modeled on a Super Nintendo gamepad.

So I think for controlling that type of game,

I don't know.

Is it crazy to call that an S-tier controller?

I think it's S-tier.

And I think an additional point of value in the controller is that you don't have to look at the A, B, and XY buttons to know the difference between them.

Because some are concave and some are convex.

Which was a thing they changed for the Super Nintendo versus the Super Famicom.

My understanding is the first-gen Super Famicom controllers, all of the buttons were raised and people got a little confused.

So they added that for the

worldwide release.

It's excellent.

Yeah, it's cool.

Cool controller.

I love it.

An S-tier controller.

I love how it looks up there.

I like the color of the buttons, too.

Those are nice purples.

Those are nice purples and the Super Famicom one has the red, yellow, green, blue.

That's fun.

Yeah.

I prefer the color scheme of the Super Famicom.

Me too.

But I prefer the concave, convex buttons on the Super NES.

That was back when everything, like Americans didn't like sleek.

For whatever reason, everything we wanted, or at least the people who made Consumer Electronics thought we wanted boxy, thought we wanted Jeeps for fucking everything.

So like everything, like the Super Nintendo control, like system looks like this big, like chunky, like, you know, VCR.

And then the Super Famicom is a lot more rounded.

And

I don't know, I think, I think aesthetically pleasing, but, you know, whatever.

That's, that's the time we lived in.

Before we blast past this, the rest of this era into the

32-bit slash 64-bit era, I would like to also say that the 3DO controller sucked.

And the Atari Jaguar controller double sucks.

Wow.

The Atari Jaguar controller is

like holding,

it's like holding a

big sandwich.

It is, it is this.

It is this.

Yeah, what's the issue here?

Matt, it's like this large.

Yes.

And it has three buttons and the D-pad, but then it also has like a full phone pad of buttons in the bottom.

It's a flickable numpad.

And let me guess.

And instead of inside where the wire should be, it's ham.

There's Mayo where the other wires should be.

I

admittedly did not play a ton of Jaguar

on the controller proper.

Most of it I've played has been via emulation.

But I did play, I did use that controller some back in the day.

And

it was very chunky in a bad way.

Absolutely sucked.

Yeah.

Also, we should, I mean, we might as well, we're being comprehensive, mentioned the PC Engine slash TurboGrafx 16 controller, which was just the Nintendo controller.

It was just the NES controller.

I mean, it really didn't have,

it was two buttons and a D-pad.

It didn't really offer anything new.

There's also the Neo Geopad, which we've skipped over, but

that's just a four-button, four-face-button D-pad controller.

I only played on a Neo Geopad once, and it just felt expensive.

But I don't know if that's because I knew the system was expensive.

I was like, oh my God, I've never seen this in person.

It was probably at a Sears.

But yeah, those are our, that's that generation

as well as can be remembered.

All right, let's move on to the 3D era.

So, first up, I guess we should talk about the Saturn.

The Saturn 3D pad.

Fucking great.

You love that controller.

Oh, where do you want to put it?

I think Saturn 3D or the original Saturn pad

is

good.

But

the international release Sega Saturn pad is fucking incredible.

It's one of the best controllers ever made.

It's S tier all the way.

I can't argue with it because I've not

such a good pad.

It is such a good pad.

It's clicky.

It's responsive.

The depth on the d-pad is so good.

Like it's a good, it's a good controller.

All right, so for clarity's sake, we're putting the we're the with the 3D controller, you're saying is an S tier or the original D-pad?

No, there isn't original controller.

The 3D controller is, we haven't talked about that one yet.

We haven't got there yet.

Sega Saturn 3D, yeah.

This is the original Sega Saturn.

Got it.

So this comes out the same, at the same time as the PlayStation.

And the original PlayStation controller remember does not have analog sticks no that what that controller I think kind of sucks it sucks I don't like that one I honestly would would put that one in C tier so put put that Saturn controller in S tier

and then we don't have it on our board oh yeah we do there it is I see it down in the corner that PlayStation controller yeah the original PlayStation one without the analog sticks that controller's not cool it's pretty uncomfortable than the D-pad it's worse than it's worse than the Genesis put it in D and that's an original sin that they've never really corrected.

That D-pad still kind of sucks.

It hurts.

Yeah, it's not very pleasant.

The one thing I do really like is I really like the

visual language of the buttons, although I think that's been undermined by making the X now into the confirm button, which doesn't make any sense.

Circle is confirmed and X is cancel makes a lot more.

That's how things used to be.

That's how things should be.

But fucking whatever.

It's a different fight.

But

yeah,

I didn't love that.

And I had that.

And then he also had the analog version, which was the pre-dual shock version.

Then he ultimately got the dual shock.

So it had all three evolutions of that controller.

But that one was definitely the worst.

The analog PlayStation controller had a concave

button or concave joysticks.

And then the dual shock had raised ones.

With a little bit of texture on them.

Yeah, which then becomes like the sort of...

standard for Sony across the board.

I love the dual shock controller.

I think that's a great controller.

A controller that we don't have.

I guess we talk about

the N64 next,

but we haven't put the Virtual Boy up on this board.

D-tier.

Yeah, D-tier that piece of shit.

We're putting the PlayStation controller in D tier.

Virtual Boy controller featured four face buttons, two for each thumb.

So two on the left, two on the right, and then two D-pads also for each thumb.

Yeah.

nonsense.

And the handles were too long.

Yeah, you guys have you guys played it.

Yeah.

Played it at my place.

It's a weird controller.

It's one of the worst things I've ever had in my hands.

Horrible.

Yeah, it's brutal.

Where does that, what does that leave us?

N64 is the same.

N64.

Fuck.

It has its charms.

I do think this is what gave us the analog stick.

So again, you know, the before the dual, the dual shock is a reaction to this controller.

So, is the Sega Saturn 3?

So, is the Sega Saturn 3 controller is a reaction to this controller.

So, the presence of the analog stick is another huge innovation from Nintendo, as is force feedback, which comes via the Rumble Pack.

That's another thing that everyone copies.

So, I think it deserves a little bit of extra, you know, a little bit of extra boost for that reason.

That said,

the three different candles is nonsense.

The trident form factor doesn't like like does not have any real utility.

And

I just feel like some of like the C buttons are kind of clunky, too.

I don't know.

I want to say, I want to stick this in

B, maybe C tier.

Not C, not C.

Maybe it ends up in B tier.

It's the first controller that I can think of that has a trigger where your gun, like the gun trigger should be.

That's nice.

That's nice.

The analog stick is.

But it only has it there because it's shaped like this.

Right.

It would be somewhere else if it wasn't in this shape.

Sure, fine.

But I think that

for a company that wasn't willing to commit to analog exclusive control, right?

Because like really,

if you look at this control pad, this is an argument between people who are like, it's 3D now.

The analog stick needs to go in the primary location.

And somebody else who's like, absolutely not.

We cannot tell our developers you cannot make games through the D-pad or Nintendo.

And so they shove it in the middle.

And then most of the games end up being played with that middle stick.

No, that's true.

Yeah.

It was really rare when you were holding the

left side of the controller.

So

it's an argument between two factions internally, I think, at Nintendo.

And

there's an S-tier controller here and a C-tier controller here.

Yeah.

So what's that average out to, an A or a B?

I think

I would argue to put it in B.

Let's put it in B.

B, it is.

All right, great.

This controller seems like it was designed by you, Sleepy Joe.

Yeah.

Like you made two handles and then you forgot you made two, so you made a third one.

Let me tell you something.

This controller, it has to be shaped like a trident.

Who are these people?

It's in B tier.

Let's just move on.

Sasha has homework to do.

Sega Saturn's 3D controller is a baffling piece of technology shaped like a circle with six face buttons, an analog stick, and a D-pad.

It's not up on our board here, but it was released for nights.

It was packed in with nights.

And

it's not good.

I love looking at it.

I think it looks really cool.

It looks cool, but

it is a weird...

It was a weird choice.

I would put it at C tier.

That sounds fair.

Yeah, the Sega Saturn 3D controller.

And hey, while we're staying in Sega Town, let's talk about the next-gen Dreamcast.

Fucking

lot of fondness for this controller.

I love the VMU as an idea, even though it was not well implemented.

I think the positioning of the analog stick versus the D-pad is like, well, that was a right move to put those where they are.

Triggers.

And triggers are awesome.

The buttons have a great feel to it.

My only issue with this controller is

it's straight on the sides.

Yeah.

So your wrists are like kind of cramped holding it.

They're not in ergonomically in line with your forearms.

If they're, you know, it's, and so it, I feel like for long periods, if I was playing a game for a while, I'd always get pretty uncomfortable holding that thing.

But it is a really cool controller.

It is also a really cool looking controller.

I also don't love where the cord is.

For some reason,

that's a little clunky.

It should be in the back of it, not the front.

But yeah, they need a room for the VMU.

I still have a lot of fondness for this one.

I would personally maybe put this in A tier, but maybe that's overrating it.

So

I'm living

in a time when there is a fan community making a new VMU.

Wow.

Wow.

With a better screen.

Wow.

And

if you're making

an addition to a controller 24 years after release, I think that that means that the love and fondness for this controller is off the charts.

100%.

So I put this in S tier.

You go all the way to S.

That's interesting.

I have a hard time getting there.

It had a portable game system inside the controller.

Right, but it also was better, again, better in theory than in practice.

Like, I remember the whole thing.

It was like, oh,

when you play NFL 2K, you can pick your plays from the VMU.

And then if you you actually try to do that it was kind of clunky it didn't work great and like like you know the sonic adventures uh game that came with it again it wasn't great to play on the go and it has

this portable

device in the controller if you have one true otherwise the memory card goes in there otherwise that's where the memory card goes should should we explain what the vmu is to any children who are listening yeah dear children also go to bed listen to your parents don't smoke and do your homework

24 years ago, before you were born, there was a system called the Sega Dreamcast, which was so far ahead of its time that it killed the company that made it.

The Sega Dreamcast was an online

enabled, out-of-the-box, an online-enabled console in 1999.

So to put that in perspective, most people weren't going online at all.

No.

And this was a company who was like, no, online's the future.

We're putting online inside of our system.

It was CD-based games and

used some kind of proprietary technology.

So it was

more storage than a regular CD.

It's called GD-ROM.

What the fuck was it called?

Who the fuck knows?

And the controller had a slot in it that you could put a memory card.

This used to be the way that you would save games.

But if you wanted to, you could get a fancy memory card called the Visual Memory Unit, the VMU.

And the VMU, this is also, I'm not reading this.

No, this is off the dome.

This is off the dome.

The VMU had a small L C D screen in it and a tiny controller and a tiny set of buttons.

So you could save your game to the VMU, which would be active kind of like the Wii U gamepad during play, like showing you information or allowing you to choose plays and NFL.

I never did that.

But then you could save your game to the VMU, take it on the go, and like a tiny Game Boy, play the VMU and do these mini games when you were bored because nobody had cell phones so there was nothing else to look at I just came up with a great VMU game

so it will requires two things one there has to have been an evangelian video game for uh the sega dreamcast okay and then the vmu game is uh It's just like entry plug the game.

And so it's like a Tamagotchi, but it's shinji and you have to like take care of, make sure that shinji's okay in the entry entry plug.

And then the Evangelion game is basically just like Armored Core, but it's Evangelion.

And you do better in the game if your Shinji is good

in the VMU entry plug.

There were Evangelion games for the Dreamcast.

Wow.

None of them use this technology.

They fucked up.

Matt,

they fucked up.

And

you should be the president.

I should be the president.

Matt sounded like he was talking to Santa.

And then, and then,

you know what?

I'd love to have an audience with Santa.

I got some things to say to that motherfucker.

Anyway,

Sega Dreamcast was so far ahead of its time that Sega,

once people realized that you could burn discs for the Sega Dreamcast, because it ran on Windows CE.

So it was like just a single hack trick,

the system was fucking crushed.

And so was my heart.

It was a rad system, had some rad games.

They had Marvel versus Capcom 2.

Yeah, great game.

And I think I actually imported that.

I'm trying to remember.

Because I imported a few Dreamcast.

Skies of Arcade.

PowerStone was a lot of fun.

I don't think

I don't think I ever played a Sega Dreamcast game with its printed label on it.

There's no way I did.

We covered fucking

dude.

Worm dude.

Fishman.

C-Man.

There it is.

C-Man, yeah.

C-Man's good.

C-Man's good.

And that was another way in which the Dreamcast controller was expandable.

You snapped in a microphone.

Yeah.

And then you could talk to your guy on the screen.

The

S tier.

N64 also had that ability.

Yeah, for hey, you Pikachu.

I can't get all the way to S tier, but

to me, it's A tier just for ergonomic reasons.

But

I will let Matt make the final call.

He doesn't know it.

I've touched it.

He was born after it.

That's not true.

I've touched it.

I think I don't want to make Heather mad, and I don't think Nick will care if I put it in A or S actually.

So I'm going to put it in S.

I feel like my voice has been heard.

It's fine.

It's fine to say an S here.

Thank you.

All right, let's move on to the PlayStation 2, the Dual Shock 2.

I think this is more so than piracy.

I think that the people awaiting the PlayStation 2 is what killed the Dreamcast.

And I think

also the presence of a DVD drive as opposed to a a proprietary format was so huge.

So many people, including me, used it as their primary DVD player for years.

And so I, but

the Dual Shock 2 is a really good controller.

And I think it's an improvement over the DualShock 1.

And yeah, I'd stick that some bitch in

S tier.

I think that the Dual Shock 2,

here's what I'm going to say.

I'm frustrated.

that Sony, for the last,

what, almost 30 years, has put the analog sticks where they've put them.

Yes, I agree.

They should flip them on the left side.

It is crazy.

It's chaos that

they continue to put those analog sticks in the dead center of their controllers when even the Dreamcast and the GameCube put the analog stick where it's proper in your primary position.

And the Xbox.

And the Xbox.

But it's a, boy, it's a real, like, it's a, it's a Sony Walkman style.

Yeah.

They nailed it and they don't change it.

Right.

It is really good.

And, you know, the,

the, what do you call that?

The, like, the rumble in the, yep.

In the PlayStation 2 controller, that thing, if it was on a flat surface, it wouldn't be for very long.

That thing would fucking vibrate.

Yep.

You know what I'm going to say?

I think we stick the Sunbitch in A tier because I think because they iterate on the same format in the PlayStation with the PlayStation 3 and 4 and 5, I think there are better versions of this template.

So I think I'd put it there.

Nothing warms my heart more 24 years later than putting the DualShock 2 in A tier and the Dreamcast controller last year.

We're building the future you wish you had.

I feel validated.

I will say the DualShock controller's

analog stick placement allows for games like Katamari Damasi to exist.

You know, because somebody looked at this controller and was like, okay, well, what is this?

And what could you do with it?

Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, in the same way that kind of the

it didn't quite, it's not the same thing, but I mean, like GoldenEye and the Nintendo 64 controller sort of set up how

these games are kind of going to be controlled on a first-person games are going to kind of be controlled on a console.

Obviously, that got tweaked when dual analog sticks became standard.

All right.

That being said,

I do think that travel on both the Dual Shock 2 and the Dreamcast analog stick is a little much.

Like, you really have to swing that guy all over the place in order to...

There's not like a precise amount of control

on these two controllers.

So I would be willing to put the Dreamcast in A tier and the DualShock in C tier.

Wait, you're bumming about in two tiers?

What the hell?

GameCube's up next.

Let's go through GameCube and Xbox.

Let's finish out this generation, and then we can see if anything needs to be nudged.

I think that's good for now.

Okay, are we doing GameCube?

GameCube.

Let's do GameCube.

I want to stick this in C tier.

I think it has some.

I think it, it, like, the, you know, holy shit.

The locking R trigger feels good, but all the asymmetries in this controller make it really awkward.

I don't like the button layout.

Um, I think, I don't like that there's a, uh, a Z trigger trigger on one side, but not on the other side, or an R button, whichever one is called.

Yeah.

Which

there's only three shoulder buttons is really awkward.

I don't like the C stick at all.

I don't like it.

I think the positioning in the D-pad makes it basically useless.

The main reason I have any fondness for this controller is because of Smash Brothers melee, and this is still the best way to play a Smash Brothers game, which is what I would would let me bump it up any tiers at all.

But I kind of feel like this is a C tier controller.

Holy shit.

I think you just got too much going on.

Holy shit.

Shit.

I don't like, just from an aesthetic standpoint, this little gap in between right here where the floating D-pad and the floating C-stick sort of are.

Yeah.

They're off on their sort of little own, they're on peninsulas, but like I hate this little, this little valley right here.

It really bothers me.

And also, yeah, I don't love the, I don't love the buttons.

I have no fondness for the buttons at all.

I can never really feel like I was having a good time with this controller.

Wow.

This is astonishing to me.

Astonishing?

I thought this was a B-tier controller.

Maybe it is B-tier.

I thought that the clickiness and the interesting

feedback that you get when you're playing the triggers on the GameCube.

That I like.

That's my favorite thing.

A really interesting snap.

And I also think that Nintendo's willingness to think outside the box of how you interact with buttons in that there's a primary button and then there are buttons that are off to the side of those of that primary button is interesting and effective.

And also, Resident Evil 4, one of the best games ever fucking made, is designed around the GameCube controller, and it is an excellent input system for it.

No, I mean, that's the thing is, like, if there's, like I mentioned with Melee, if there's things that I like about this controller, it's because I have associated it with games that use it effectively.

I might, you know, honestly, I might like it more if it,

if there was just a better Mario game on the system.

Boy, the Mario game on this system sucks.

Here's what I'll say.

I like this controller more than I like the N64 controller.

Yeah.

I think it's better.

So

I would like to put the GameCube controller in B and bump the N64 controller down to C.

You know what?

I'll allow it.

I disagree with this completely.

But we can do it.

No, no, no, no.

I don't want to

stomp it on your dreams.

You think that the N64 controller is better than the GameCube controller?

Look, I'd rather use a GameCube controller, but I think in terms of, but I'd also rather probably use a, you know, some of the controllers that are ranked below the NES controller.

But I think we're also putting into some,

offering some historical perspective in terms of these rankings, right?

So, I mean, like, yeah, for for a modern game, I'd rather use a dual shock than a Super Nintendo controller, but we're rating the Super Nintendo controller a little bit higher because of what it did for,

you know, innovations and control schemes.

So

I don't know.

I don't think the

GameCube has much of a lasting legacy as a controller.

I don't think there's a lot that other controllers actually.

I don't know.

The Smash community still uses it.

I agree with that.

But yes, that is

with GameCube controller ports built in because of how many people still wanted to use the legacy controller.

Well, that was also for backward compatibility.

And I think

this

playing an N64 game on a non-N64 controller is almost impossible.

True.

You can play a GameCube game almost on any type of controller that has.

Oh, oh, excellent point.

The N64 gave us the analog stick.

That's the whole thing.

That's the whole reason we're rating the N64 controller so high in the first.

Wait, I thought I took that to mean the opposite, I think, of what Matt wanted it to mean.

I'll stop you both right there.

I don't know what I mean.

I just am bringing it up as a,

I think it's a negative.

Maybe it's, I mean it as a negative to the um the N64.

Too many of the games are built toward that controller.

That's why I'm, I take it as a positive.

If you can't swap out that controller for any generic controller, then the controller itself is specific, interesting, and valuable.

Whereas, like, yeah, you could make an argument that the, you know, you could play a Genesis game on basically anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How funny, how interesting that the GameCube controller is the hardest one so far.

Well, it's also, I think,

it's an argument that's being, that has been made for 20 years, which is that people were either extremely pro or extremely anti-GameCube controller.

I like that Nintendo tries their own thing.

I like that

they aren't Sony or just like, we're just going to make the same fucking controller for 30 years.

i like i like that they took that big swing i don't think either this or the n64 controller honestly worked all that well it's a b tier i guess if you're saying all right fine put it in a b tier

um let's talk about xbox I have a lot of fondness for the big boy Xbox controller, aka the Duke, that said this absolutely cannot go above C tier and maybe honestly belongs in D tier.

It kind of sucks.

I love this thing.

It sucks.

It is.

It is.

It's too big.

It sucks.

It's too fucking big.

But what I like about it is,

I got kind of big hands, so it was a thing of like, I can kind of use this thing, you know, and I, again, just talking about playing Halo on that thing felt pretty good.

But I think the S controller is such a clear improvement.

Yeah, the S controller.

Yeah, the S controller becomes sort of the standard

Microsoft controller.

Kind of like the DualShock becomes the standard Sony controller.

And the S is a good, it's a good controller.

Yeah, I'd put the S in

an A tier.

Yeah, it's an A tier controller.

I do want to say this about the Duke.

One thing that I liked about it is the.

Is it called the Duke?

That's

called the Duke.

That was its nickname.

It's got so big.

It was apparently named after one of the hardware team's kids, I think.

They called it the Duke for that reason.

But yeah, it's affectionate.

I named it after my giant son.

Hail to the king, baby.

The cord is as thick as my piss.

Again, another thing for younger people who are listening, all of these controllers so far are in the wired controller era.

These all were plugged in, and that includes the Duke, which had

a quick release because a problem with these is like if, like, again,

your roommate was stumbling in front of the TV or your mom was vacuuming, the controller might get pulled on and it might pull the entire console off of the shelf and could wreck your could wreck your game.

So

this one had, if there was any tension on it, it would quick release.

And it was kind of an interesting stopgap innovation.

But yeah, put this in D tier.

It sucks.

It's not even, it's like, it's uncomfortable.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, Nick has big hands.

I have

regular hands.

Right.

It's hard to hard to hold.

I will say that looking at this, looking at our chart so far with the

PlayStation 1 and the Duke in D tier makes me feel like what the barrier of D is, does it hurt to play?

Yes, yeah.

Well, also, it's hard to get a controller right on your first try, right?

Like

this was the first attempt

at a controller from a new console.

First try, but not the first controller ever made.

Like they should have been able to see, okay, what's everyone else doing?

Let's put the difference.

Yeah, the fact that the NES controller is so high on the chart.

Yeah.

So it's like Nintendo being like,

pointing to the stands and hitting a home run at the the first at the invention of baseball.

There are three Sega controllers ahead of this one.

Like, that's

I do think the S controller, I don't know if it's represented here, but I do think that one is probably B or A tier.

I'd maybe just put it in.

What is the internet?

You keep saying the S controller.

Xbox controller S was a smaller, slimmer version of the Duke, which then set the sort of input language for all Xboxes to follow, are essentially using the controller X or controller S configuration.

Okay.

But it's confusing because Xbox uses just letters arbitrarily all the time.

And they have an Xbox Series S now, which is not related.

But yeah, the controller S.

I'd maybe sick that in A.

All right.

Anything else in this, Jen?

Anything we overlooked?

Nope.

Let's move on to.

I can't believe Dreamcast is an S.

I just can't.

It's an S tier.

Hey, just looking at it, though, it's just like, it's, it's, look, I'm happy with it.

I guess I'm fine with.

Again, I disagree with it being an S tier, but, you know, whatever.

Let's move on to.

All right, fine.

You want to move it to A?

I'll move it to A.

I would put the Dreamcast controller and all of its incredible options on the same tier as the NES controller.

I swear to God, if it goes lower than that, though, I'm going to

break the fucking mic.

It just seems crazy.

I mean, the dual shot gets iterated on.

Okay, okay, looking at this.

Looking at this, I feel comfortable.

I feel Super NES and the Sega Saturn pad are both

like you cannot improve upon them.

Move the DualShock 2 down to B.

Give us some room to grow.

Whoa, this is...

Okay, but then...

This

GameCube controller is sitting next to the PlayStation 2 controller.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

The DualShock 2 has to be A.

It's an incredible controller.

I just feel like the...

Yeah, but it's fine.

Leave it at A.

Okay, let's keep going.

uh

speaking of uh speaking of sony we got the ps3 six axis and also the dual shock three i mean i think these are so similar we can kind of just rate them as one i feel like this is you know this is wireless it's wireless uh and it has the

what was the name of the locomotion tech they had whatever the it was yeah it was like it like With Sony, it's like the sadness engine or some shit.

But

that wasn't really like super necessary, like well implemented and hasn't hasn't been a thing that's that stuck around.

It was more reactive to the Wii controller, which we'll talk about in a bit.

But I do think this is just a better version of the Dual Shock 2.

It's an A tier.

It's an A tier, yeah.

Yeah, A tier.

I like it.

It does not hold up

in modern day.

If you've had a PS3 controller for a long time, those fuckers, those sticks.

drift real bad.

That's a good point.

Maybe we maybe we nudge it down because where's the dual shock 4 gonna go?

We're gonna put that one all the way up in S?

I have a similar problem with the 4, but

I think somehow somehow as consoles have gotten better, the sticks have gotten worse.

And I, you know, it's tough.

That's why they sell these elite ones now that are like $200 and you can swap out all the parts.

Yep.

Apparently, the Elite Dual Sense was like the best-selling controller of the year or something like that.

Yeah, people like people are,

I guess, if you're going to buy a second controller, people are like, well, I might as well get the top shelf one.

Interesting.

All right, let's

are we all comfortable with it there?

I'm finding A tier.

Let's look at

the Xbox 360 controller again, iterating on the controller S.

I do really like it.

I honestly would.

I mean, I feel like from this point on, the Xbox controllers stay so similar, and

it's my primary gaming controller.

It's what I use on my PC.

It's what I prefer to use.

I would almost put this one in S tier.

But I'm trying to remember.

I'm trying to remember if there were issues with the Xbox 360 controller specifically that I'm forgetting.

If I may,

I would keep this one at A tier, and then as soon as they become rechargeable

instead of battery-powered, then they move into S tier.

Because

you'd shoo through batteries on this fucking thing.

Yeah, I mean...

But

the current Xbox controllers do have a battery port like you could put batteries in it if you wanted to, but they also have the

maniac.

Yeah, I'm not doing it.

I use rechargeable batteries in my uh modern Xbox Series S wireless controller.

I use my PC.

What?

Yeah, just throw rechargeable batteries in that.

You don't charge it like with a USB-C port?

I mean, I could

madness.

I say 360 is A tier, and then the Xbox,

whatever the fuck, the Series XS is your S tier version of this.

Well, we'll get a better

header.

All right, leave that in A tier.

A tier is getting pretty bulky.

We might have to make some revisions.

We'll keep going.

This brings us to the outlier of outliers, the Wii Remote.

How to evaluate this thing.

It is

so different from everything else.

It did not really have a legacy.

It was kind of a gimmick that certainly boosted Nintendo's hardware sales for a time and made them the unexpected winner of sorts of that generation.

But

it kind of sucked to play a lot of games on.

Yeah.

I mean, you have to add what it did.

The nunchucks were an extra part of it, too.

Which was kind of, in a sense, it was kind of cool that your hands could be separated.

Like that sense of freedom was nice, but it was also not great to control, you know, a lot of games.

They did have a pro controller, which was its own thing,

or the classic controller.

It was a classic controller pro was the version.

I didn't love that classic controller.

I don't know what to do with this.

Here's,

I don't, I don't like it.

It was cool, though.

It's cool.

At the time, it was so cool.

No controller in, here's my argument for it being S tier.

No controller in history

has brought people over to your house.

And the we, if you had a Wii in 2006,

people weren't coming over for the graphics.

They were coming over to hold the controller, to play bowling, to fucking play tennis.

And that is just because this controller had that gyroscope in it and the fucking laser pointer.

Like, I would argue that most of the people age 30 to 35

played with the Wii, with just the Wii remote almost exclusively, and never picked up the nunchuck.

It wasn't unless you were playing, like, Super Mario Galaxy or No More Heroes or some shit that you were using the nunchuck.

Yeah.

So, the nunchuck is for gamer gamers who had a Wii.

Everybody else, moms, dads, were playing with the fucking Wii remote.

I think it's an S S-tier controller.

And I'm saying that, also, not really liking it.

It's a persuasive argument.

You know, the case against it is: yes, it wasn't great for games that weren't just explicitly trying to trade on its gimmickery.

It was not all that great as a pointer.

There was the clunkiness of you had to have the bar that was positioned either on top of or underneath your TV that was plugged into your Wii, and that was always kind of fucking weird.

And, you know, there were games that tried to use it like as like a gun, like, like there were, and that didn't really work.

I think the games that used it effectively demonstrated that it was a fantastic controller.

Yes.

It's just that everybody was trying to shoehorn regular video games into that controller, and it sucks for that.

How many of them do you think wound up in people's TVs?

Definitely a good amount.

I mean, they released the wrist strap.

Yeah.

You know, that was a reaction to it.

And also the, you know, little softening guard, the glove that you put around it.

The wee condom.

Yeah.

Fuck it.

Put it in.

Let's put it in an S.

Let's go.

It's an S.

Everyone's.

Not on our board.

The PlayStation move.

Yeah, I thought about the move and I thought about the Kinect, and I feel like

I don't know.

They fucking suck.

Yeah.

And there's a reason those don't really exist.

Like, that type of thing doesn't exist anymore, really.

Yeah, and I know that we're including some controllers on here, like the

Saturn 3D controller that weren't pack-ins, but these are mostly just traditional controllers that would come bundled with a game, with the system.

So I don't feel like they're the same thing.

Okay.

All right.

That brings us to the next gen.

We're almost home.

Yeah.

All right.

We got

Dual Shock 4.

So

here's my argument against the Dual Shock 4.

I think it's fine.

I think that the

Dual Sense is a better controller.

Yeah, sure.

The only thing the Dual Shock 4 adds is this fucking touchpad thing in the middle that literally nobody uses.

Yeah, it doesn't really work.

It kind of just functions as a big oversized pause button.

It has a speaker built in, so you get like BB crying when you're playing Death Stranding.

But overall, this controller is just kind of like, okay, sure, guys.

I think it's an A tier controller because Sony just hasn't topped it yet.

You know what?

Put it in B tier.

What?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's better than the six axis.

Put it in B tier.

No, put it in A tier and move this six axis down.

All right, I'm fine with that.

I don't, you know what?

I don't like the sound, the fucking speaker in the controller.

I don't like it.

I like it.

I don't like it.

I like it.

When you said that, that made me want to bump it down.

No, I like it.

It's annoying.

I like it.

A little BB crying and

noises.

You got to shake your controller.

We could put the six six-axis and the DualShock 4 in

bump them both down.

No, no way.

This is all one controller, as is my understanding.

The Xbox One, the Series X S controller is just the Xbox wireless controller.

That is one controller that has remained fixed since that generation.

Xbox One as a system was kind of whatever, but this controller I think is terrific, and it's the best way to control PC games.

I put this as an S tier, it's S tier.

They finally did it.

Yeah, I think it's

and I think of the S's, it's the most S of these by far.

Oh fucking far.

I think so.

No, I think it's so good.

No, because we moved the Dreamcast down, so it can't be the most S.

So do we have two Xbox, two versions of the Xbox controller?

The Xbox One and the Xbox Series controller, they're the same.

Oh, but we're, but this, this, it's accounting for both generations.

Got it.

Yeah.

Dual sense.

No, wait, we're not there yet.

We still got, we still got, we got the Wii U game pad.

We got the Wii U game pad.

So we're talking about the actual Wii U itself that's got the little handles on it.

Well, no, it's the gamepad.

Yeah, the gamepad.

Because the Wii U sits

on your thing.

Right.

It's separate.

Right.

This is the controller that has a screen.

No, that's what I mean.

That we're talking about

the screen with the handle.

It has has a screen, a camera, speakers.

Yeah, it's got the little edges on the side.

It's very cumbersome.

Nothing in gaming history has been as baffling as the move from the Wii to the Wii U, from naming convention to what they did with the controller.

It's baffling.

Absolute nonsense.

Nobody's ever blown a lead like Nintendo fumbled this past.

I'm very confused.

You don't get to the Switch without this, though.

That's the other thing.

It's an intermediary, you know.

Sure.

They almost had it.

But, but also, but I also thought the Switch was going to crash and burn because of the Wii U because I was like, they can't believe they're fucking doing this again, except they actually perfected it.

Yeah.

It's

which is very unlike Nintendo to be like, we're just going to take the same thing and improve it.

It's so, it's fuck everything they do.

They've done it in the past with the NES controller and the SNES controller.

I mean, it was kind of its own, it's a completely different thing.

What the Wii U was is they released the Switch prototype to consume.

Yes, exactly.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah,

they 3D printed concept art and put it out on the shelves.

It's a D tier.

It's D tier because gaming on that thing sucks.

Awful.

I might want to add a tier.

No, I think that's fair.

I think that's fine as a D tier.

It's fine as T.

I'm getting mad look at it.

It really sucks.

It's so bad.

And then also that it had a limited range if you wanted to play it on the screen.

And it ran out of fucking batteries.

Yeah.

They put a TV in your hand and then they were like, it's battery powered.

Yeah, it's so close.

It's so close to being a good idea.

What's also frustrating is that the Wii U pad controller was incredible.

I don't even think it's on our on our map here.

Like the Wii U pad controller is amazing.

You mean this, the like the it's the pro controller?

It's like, yeah, their pro controller is frustrating.

It's so good.

It's so good.

But is that the Wii U pro controller?

Is that the Switch broker?

This one right here is the Wii U one.

That one I love.

I love that.

It's incredible.

I feel like that's like an A-tier controller.

That's an A-tier controller released simultaneously with a D-tier controller.

I didn't, yeah, I didn't really touch a Wii U ever.

I've seen it.

You get the gist.

Yeah, I think I get it.

So I still have my Wii U hooked up.

Yeah.

And that's because you can play Wii games in HDMI.

And

I don't think Wii games.

benefit that greatly from a CRT.

So I, if I'm doing retro gaming in that era, that Wii, Wii U pocket, then I use my Wii U.

And my favorite game to play on it is Jeopardy.

Wow.

Because you memorized all the answers?

Nope.

The Wii U Jeopardy or the Wii Jeopardy?

Wii Jeopardy.

Huh.

What distinguishes it from other Jeopardy versions?

You can point

with the stick and

pick a category.

That is pretty good.

That is fun.

It's fucking great.

All right.

That brings us to

that's though that cleans up this generation, right?

We got the Wii U.

That's right.

So So that brings us up to the present.

Yep.

All right.

So remaining, we've got the, we don't have to talk about the Xbox again.

So what we've got left is the Switch Joy-Con slash the Switch Pro controller and the dual sense.

Yep.

I know we love the Switch.

I

know where you're going and I agree.

I would like to make an argument for the Joy-Cons being in the D tier.

I don't know if I go that far, but actually just using the Joy-Cons separate from the Switch Switch is not a fun experience.

But I think you do have to take into account that a big part of the utility of the Joy-Cons is that they hook onto the Switch

and it lets you use it as a portable system, which is the whole gimmick of the system.

And it works pretty well

aside from the analog stick drift, which is egregious.

The analog stick drift is bad.

At a certain point after holding the Joy-Cons,

they don't detach from the rails, but they start to like sort of, the rails start to bend a little bit.

Like they become a little more loose.

And the D-pad is not a D-pad.

It's four directional buttons.

And I think those are some of the worst buttons in gaming.

No, that's a good point.

They're horrible.

What?

Can we C-tier it?

Is that okay?

I'd be happy with the C-tier.

I put it in C-tier at the highest.

And I also, this is just a Nintendo thing because this is now, well, I guess they've always had letters on them this letter scheme is absolute bullshit this fucking sucks you mean XYAB or what do you mean yes I think but it's been that way since Super India I know

well then maybe Xbox fucked up because They're different.

They're the same letters, but they're different.

This is the kind of thing that the EU needs to regulate in the same way they said like everything has to have USB-C charging now.

Like they need to come in and they need to say all game controllers have to have the same button names.

Like I like I don't want to be when I'm playing a fucking Xbox game and I'm switching over to a Switch game, having to learn new positions for my X and Y buttons.

I totally agree with that.

Right.

Which, which Sony avoids because, you know, you've got the Super NES comes out with that X, Y, B A, right?

Yes.

So they establish the vocabulary and they do it because the Nintendo controller is BA, right?

And then Genesis is like, all right, we'll do basically the same thing, ABC.

It is Microsoft that's like, no, we'll do it my way.

Right.

And they are the ones that fuck it up because Sony's like, we're sidestepping this.

Yeah.

It's going to be triangles and X's.

Their mistake was doing ABXY when they should have done like ABCD or something like that.

You know, just have a different.

Why not one, two, three, four?

One, two, three, four work.

Sure.

Just do something else.

But either way, it needs to be standardized.

The Nintendo Switch Pro controller is excellent.

Yeah, I like the controller.

I would put it in A tier.

Yeah, that's fine with me.

Yeah, the Pro controller is really great, and I love mine.

Now we're going to get, now we're we're going to get to my mama.

DualSense?

Fucking ST.

I love the Dual Sense.

And this is the thing that I think is really encouraging about gaming is I think we're at a point where control has gotten really, really refined and really good.

I love using the DualSense.

It's really fun to hold.

Oof.

Those adaptive triggers.

It feels great.

It feels great.

It's still got that speaker.

Still got like a little bit of a hope that it'll be a go like,

the speaker's better, though.

Yeah, it's good speaker.

The speaker's a little better, but also shut the fuck up.

Oh, he hates it.

I don't like the speaker.

Get out of there.

He hates it.

I want to do a special shout out to the Xbox Adaptive Controller.

Oh, yeah.

Which is which is an alternative control and input method for people who

need a different controller and input method.

And it's fucking great.

You know, it has opened up gaming to an entirely

often forgotten audience.

Yeah.

And

that's great.

PlayStation has one also.

I don't remember what the name of it is, but it has.

It's probably called like the melody or some shit.

It's probably called like the

Sony, the Sony homeroom.

I don't know what it's called.

I love Sony.

But Microsoft, I think, deserves credit because I think they had, theirs was first.

And I think they, yeah, it is, it has gotten a lot of praise from Sony Access Controller.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's awesome that that exists.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, that this is making gaming more.

confidentiality.

The adaptive controller and the access controller are both fantastic.

And I'm glad they're out there and they fucking rule.

That's a very

great point, Heather.

And I do want to mention one more thing, which I don't know if we want to talk about here, but in terms of controls,

should we talk mouse and keyboard?

I think,

I think,

they should do that a different thing.

I think they should, no, because it's here's the thing.

It's a method of control, and it comes with the system.

If you're playing a, if you're a PC gamer, that's what comes standard.

For certain types of games, it is the best way to control them.

And, you know, like, like, uh, it's, it's things like, like, turn-based strategy, real-time strategy.

Yeah.

Um, uh, you know, certainly I'd some would argue FPS.

I just, it's, it's, if you want to play competitively, certainly that's what people use.

MOBAs,

there's all sorts of games where that is the primary input method.

And I think I like using a mouse and keyboard.

I played Disco Elysium exclusively with a mouse and keyboard, and that was point and click games.

One of the great gaming experiences of my life.

I loved that.

I'm not a fan of the mouse and keyboard, but I do admit that when I am

absolutely smoked in Fortnite, it's clear that the other person is using a mouse and keyboard.

I think

I think I could go A on this.

I would put mouse and keyboard all the way up in S tier.

Wow.

But that's just, that's just B.

We're trying to come to a consensus.

Well, here,

argument for it being S tier, mouse was

brought out

in like, what, 1984?

And nobody.

It's still the mouse.

They nailed it.

Like, they nailed it at the junk.

They did a really good job yeah i don't like it's like what if you could just move your hand around like yeah great then i i think how do you click on something oh you click on it i got a i got a i got a big hot take i don't think the mouse is going to be superseded until apple vision pro wow that's and i think that the moment the mom like the moment you can just literally point

then yeah that's a new input method

they well they've done different types of uh

mouse, mice,

they've done different, they've iterated on the mouse in different ways.

Like, I've seen those ones that are like the ball or something, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have trackballs.

Or yeah, you mean like a mouse that has a built-in track ball that or like it's like I've seen them where it's like it's a ball and you can move the ball.

Yeah, that's a track ball.

Yeah, that those have existed since I mean, those have existed since early

arcade days.

But yeah, that was definitely an alternate PC input method that's been around for a while.

Hey, do you guys want a little more more Viking history right now?

Yeah, please.

They had mouse and keyboard?

Well, so the reason that some words in the English language are mouse and mice and some words are door and doors is that the English originals were

all irregular.

It was like tooth and teeth, mouse and mice,

goat and I believe gat.

Like so many fucking weird sh like Doran.

Yeah.

Right.

Instead of doors.

And the Vikings came in and they conquered people and were like, like, This shit needs to end, yes, exactly.

And under threat of force, said, Start putting S's at the end of the fucking regular words so that we can learn English.

They brought a naked berserker in and got it done.

So, when you see an S on the end of

a word like doors, it's because the Vikings shouted until somebody said, Okay, it's doors, it's doors, it's doors.

I kind of like that.

Yeah, I'm in favor of it.

I like it too.

Yep, plural, a dumb thing you have to learn.

Why do we need plural?

Get out of here.

I'm, I,

a lot of words got to go.

Yeah.

Agreed.

We got to fix them.

One shoe, two shoe.

What does the S do to two shoes?

I think.

No, I get it with two shoe.

I think that the way you interact with anything, we should, so here's another thing.

That Vikings, as their alphabet got older, it got smaller.

So they were like, we don't need all these fucking letters to get rid of us.

I love that.

That's good.

I think we should reduce all input and interaction to the concept attack.

Well, yeah, you would think this.

Do you remember when there were a bunch of Nintendo prototype controllers, images that were that were either leaked or released?

But one of them, this was in the Nintendo Star Cube days, one of them was just a star-shaped controller with a single button on it.

And they were like,

they tried for a time to figure out, can we design a controller where there's just one button that you press?

And it's just kind of,

it's kind of interesting to it to obviously it didn't work, but to try to attempt to reduce things that much at a, at a point where now we've got so many different fucking, you know,

doodads on one of these controllers, you got 20 different like button bindings that you've gotta, you've got to learn to play these games.

And I don't know.

There is an argument for simplifying things a little bit.

A lot of great games work with just two buttons and an input or a, you know, a D-pad.

Yeah, all you really need is move analog and fire.

Yeah.

Gun.

That's it.

And switch gun.

If you're vampire survivors, you just need one

mistake.

There you go.

There you go.

The ultimate game.

All right.

So I think we're done here.

Yeah, this is good.

We don't need to recap this.

This is too much stuff.

I'm not going to read through the 25 controllers we just classified.

I think we can.

Here it goes.

Ready?

Jesus Christ.

Do you have anywhere to go?

What are you doing?

I got nothing going on.

S tier is Super NES, Saturn, Wii, Xbox,

the most recent.

Yeah, Xbox wireless controllers, if you're not sure.

Xbox wireless controller, and then Dual Sense 5 for the PS5.

In A tier, it's the NES, the Dreamcast, the PlayStation 2, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 4, the Wii U Pro controller, and the Switch Pro controller.

B-tier controllers include N64, GameCube, and the PS3.

C-tier controllers are Genesis and Switch, and in D-tier,

D-tier controllers are the PlayStation 1, the original Xbox, and the Wii U.

Did we rank the master system above the

do we put that in C-tier?

Do we put it in D tier?

That was D tier as well.

Yeah, it fucking sucks.

There were a few here that we didn't have graphics for that may have been lost in the recap.

Yeah.

What a spirited tier list.

That was a lot of fun.

Yeah,

that was a good debate.

Fun to do.

Maybe not fun to listen to, but we can do that.

Look up some president tier lists.

It's like that.

Yeah.

Do you want to?

You think this is not fun to listen to?

I don't know how it is.

Do you not like listening to me while you're talking?

I love listening.

I love listening to both of you.

You both are two good friends who have great insights.

Friends.

And make me laugh.

I like that.

That's, I like the sound of that.

I've heard people say they like it because they get mad.

Damn it, Sleepy Joe.

You would like the Xbox control.

It has the release.

So if you don't know what the boys are doing, a long time ago.

Go on YouTube.

A long time ago, they brought up that there are AI-generated tier lists

announced

or

the dialogue is AI versions of Trump and Biden and Obama.

And they're very funny because the presidents would never talk at length about the pros and cons of Baldur's game.

Yes, yeah.

But

there they are talking about it, and it's a good listen.

Yeah, those are a lot of fun.

All right, and also, they all have they all talk like me, they don't have any inflection to their voice because they're AI-generated, they're all just roasting each other.

It's funny, those are great.

You admit that that's how they interact.

All right, let's uh hey, I got a segment for us.

Segment: This is our video game sales chart segment, a yellow pixel chart.

And I thought, because I knew we'd be talking about the Wii and what an outlier it was as a controller,

that we would talk about the system that had the most gimmicky controller of all time.

And the challenge here is: can you name the top five best-selling Nintendo Wii games worldwide?

Wow.

And note that

this list does include pack-ins.

So the first one should be pretty easy to knock off.

Wii Sports.

Yeah, you're correct.

Wii Sports, the number one, by a huge margin, sold as many as Wii consoles were sold, 82 million.

Heather made a good point when talking about the Wii earlier that like people came over to play it.

Yeah.

I remember being able to place the Wii controller in my grandparents' hands and they're like, I got it.

I got it.

100%.

I just know how this works.

And it is kind of amazing that that didn't like get emulated or that didn't, there wasn't like a takeaway from that generation that was like, hey, you know what?

Everything, every system has to have a little bit of Wii.

They were just sort of like, no, that was its own thing.

Which is also wild because the Joy-Cons, in theory, do.

Right.

They did, like, they have Wii functionality, but nobody wants to fucking play that way anymore.

Wii Sports number one.

Wii Sports.

Hmm.

I would be shocked.

I mean, I guess I don't know how well these games sell in general.

I know that more recently they're

big sellers.

Would The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess be a top seller for me?

There are no Zeldas in the top 10.

Wow.

I will say that number two here is a actually two in the top five are our

ongoing Nintendo franchises.

Nintendo franchise.

Yeah.

Oh, I was going to say Call of Duty.

No, there's no Call of Duty in here.

Shit.

Actually,

there's one third-party game in here, and you would never, ever guess it.

The number 10 one is a third-party game.

These are top five?

Yeah, we're trying to guess the top five, but I've got the top 10 here.

Is new Super Mario Brothers on there?

It absolutely is.

That is number four.

New Super Mario Brothers.

Wii.

That's a great one.

Yeah, that was a good one.

Man.

Man, I don't know how well it's sold, but Super Mario Galaxy.

Galaxy is in the top 10.

It's number nine, but not in the top five, but that's a good guess.

Here's a, I'll give you a hint.

This is a, this is consistently one of the biggest selling Mario franchises.

It took advantage of the Wii's.

Mario Party.

Not Mario Party.

Mario Tennis.

Mario Kart.

There you go.

Mario Kart Wii.

Number two selling 37.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

That that is pretty good.

Uh, number three is a sequel,

uh, and it is a Wii exclusive, um, and it's another one that takes full advantage of the gimmickery.

What was that, like

that, like, samurai game where you also had a gun?

Oh, I know what you're talking about, yeah.

That's uh, that was like a launch title, it's not on yeah, I remember wanting that, and then people were like, it's not that good, yeah.

A sequel

A Wii exclusive and a sequel.

Yes.

You may have.

Wii Sports 2?

It's Wii Sports Resort.

I'll give it to you.

Wow.

This was a, you know, I think people have forgotten about this, but this is also a huge, huge seller.

33 million.

New Supermarket, but this Wii at 30 million.

And then number five

is our third-party game.

Not a third-party game.

No, there's a third-party game in the top 10, number 10 out of 10, but in the top five, which we're trying to guess here, this is one I'd forgotten about.

And then I was like, oh, yeah, that one.

This is another kind of gimmicky sort of party game.

That was a Wii exclusive.

Is it the

WarioWare jackoff game?

No, it's nothing that cool.

It's not

WarioWare crank.

Jagger!

I'm going to come.

This This was a launch game in much of the world, though it's not a launch game in the U.S.

Whoa.

And this was a first party Nintendo game and a party game.

And I think this is one you'll hear the title and you'll remember it.

But do you want to take a guess at it?

Hmm.

Oh, man.

Could it be Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games?

No, it

does not have a big mascot.

Oh.

A big party game, no mascot.

Remember how a a lot of we games were named?

Was the word we and then another word?

We love Katamari.

No.

We shits.

It's not we shits.

Do you want me to give it to you?

Yeah, I don't think we'll ever get it.

We play.

You play?

I don't remember.

We play.

I don't remember what we play was.

W-I-I-Play.

It had games like, it had like a shooting range game, had a table tennis game, had laser hockey.

It was basically like a shittier version of Wii Sports.

But it was just like back in in the day they were just experimenting with what you would do with it and it sold a lot because it did kind of what we sports did and people just wanted a second game uh rest of the top 10 uh is uh we fit at number six we loved we fit

we fit

i was surprised uh we fit wasn't guessed uh we fit uh plus right afterwards uh super smash brothers brawl mario galaxy which you mentioned and number 10 i would never have guessed this just dance three sold 10 million units oh yeah but i feel like when you go go to a GameStop, if they have a Wii clearance section, it is a basket of just dancing.

My mom was very into

this like Zumba game for the Wii.

She loved it, and she would just do Zumba all the time.

I fucking loved Wii Fit.

I did Wi Fit every single day, like relentless.

Like it was the first time I had gamified fitness.

It was before I found boxing and my love of like actual sport.

But like, I fucking loved We Fit.

It's kind of, I mean, Ring Fit Adventure, which we did on the podcast, is, was an interesting one.

I know it, I, I know someone who's like, who got, lost a lot of weight using that, but there haven't been a lot of those like just kind of fun, gamified fitness.

I mean, I guess that's, that's maybe migrated to apps, right?

People like working out on an app and getting, you know, working on out on Peloton or whatever and getting up on the leaderboard.

That's, that's effectively how.

But I, there was something fun about the gimmicky controller that you just played on your console.

I also liked the sort of softness of Nintendo's

like passive-aggressive,

like if you put on a pound in We Fit, it would be like you'd, you'd see your me

get a little bit heavier and then it would be like, uh-oh, you'd better watch out.

You can't keep going in this direction.

And I'd be like, fuck.

I also, I think I lost seven straight pounds on We Fit because every day I would turn on my TV, step on that thing, and I'd be like, oh, I gotta, I gotta keep fucking working.

Was we what introduced

the warnings to be like, hey, it might be time to take out, to go outside and take a break.

I think so because Nintendo console, that was.

I know I had that on the

3DS, and that was

obviously after.

Yeah.

Very rude.

Yeah.

We fit plus had a

wireless pedometer that you would snap onto your belt so that you could track all of your fitness over the course of the day.

And I'd be like, well, instead of driving to the coffee shop, I'm going to fucking walk there just so I could get more points.

Fucking love it.

Yeah.

I do not get that sense of gratification from Apple Fitness.

This is making me realize that Switch is like the first Nintendo system where games haven't been named after the system.

Right?

Because everything was super for Super Nintendo.

Everything was 64, Nintendo 64.

There's one, two Switch.

One, two, Switch.

And one, two, Switch 2.

Yeah, but it's not like it.

It's not like everybody, one, two, Switch, I think it's cool.

There's Castlevania Switch in the same way.

There's Castlevania 64 and Super Castlevania, you know.

Or that DS thing would be like Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword.

Right, right.

Yeah, they turn it into an acronym.

And then obviously all the Wii ones and all the Us, you know.

Yes.

I guess the GameCube didn't really have that.

So maybe I just destroyed my own thing.

Mario Cubed would have been great.

A Qbert Mario?

Quart Mario?

It's like Qbert, but it's Mario.

Gad's getting horny.

Hey, that's this week's Get Play.

At our Engineering is by Alex Gonzalez.

Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram.

Also, check out our paywalled show, Get Animated.

Heather.

Actually, what are we watching this week?

We're watching Cyberpunk Edge Runners.

Oh, we're watching Edge Runners now.

I love it.

As we begin the autumn of cyberpunk, we are watching Cyberpunk Edge Runners while playing cyberpunk 2077 2.0 while setting ourselves up for we play, you play, cyberpunk Phantom Liberty.

It's all cyberpunk all the time.

If you don't like cyberpunk, the truth is the anime is fucking great.

Yeah, you don't have to like the game.

You do not have to like the game to like the anime because it's an excellent fucking anime.

Stands on its own.

We are watching that over on patreon.com/slash get played on get animated.

Wow.

And if you out there are a defender of the Duke listening to this episode, I think you got played.

Oh, shit.

Sorry.

Man, he went after his own fan.

I'm Tig Notaro.

I'm Mae Martin.

And I'm Fortune Feamster.

And together, we're handsome.

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Handsome is also a podcast hosted by us, three stand-up comedians you may have seen on your TV.

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So if you're looking for a positive, joyful show guaranteed to make you giggle, check out Handsome.

Jump right in with whatever episode tiggles your fancy or start from the very first episode.

Listen to Handsome on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube.

New episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

And don't forget, keep it.

Keep it handsome.