N64: 2 Controllers, 1 player
By Joe Rojas May 2, 2021
I'm not a young man. I'm not old either. The years I've lived on this planet, I've spent more of them with a gaming console of some kind than without.
My gaming journey started with Nintendo, then went to Sega, then back to Nintendo, then to Sony, then to Xbox, and back again to Sony. I also have a gaming PC for which I'm extremely proud. There's one console, however, that no matter the technological leaps that are made minute by minute, will remain first in my heart. The N64 will always by my queen, my muse. Though I currently don't have one in my collection of videogame oddities, when I did own one, I had it longer than any other console I've had since. Part of that is the strong replayability of games from that era and also, becoming an adult with folks that grew up with the same console layout I had. Us Rojas kids got their N64 for Christmas sometime when I was in middle school if I'm remembering correctly. I was between the ages of 10 and 13. I took immaculate care of that machine and used it through my last year of college until it finally gave way to Father Time. It felt so good to play and I recall thinking that we had some type of future tech in our house sitting right there next to the TV; I was stoked. Going back to the N64 so many years later, and with heightened curiosity, I know now that it was capable of so much more. It could have lassoed the moon.
During a recent visit with my brother, Mark, I picked up an N64 controller and dabbled in games with my first love.
It was terrible and I hated it.
I discovered quickly that the siren song of modern gaming controllers and their input maps lulled me into forgetting what started me on my videogame journey in the first place. It made going back to the N64 a temporary embarrassment of failure.
Memory is not fallible at all and mine is perfect.
I recall I was not to be effed with when it came to both Perfect Dark and Golden Eye. When we fired up PDark, though, I can't tell you how quick my sails of confidence lost wind. I was immediately clobbered by a perfectly still polygonal enemy, for you see, I was too busy staring down at the controller trying to osmose the following layout:
Nintendo's introduction of the control stick was wild to me back then. Though I remember not knowing how I should engage with the controller at first, I quickly adjusted to it. But, If you notice from the controller layout, using the control stick only moves you forward, back, and turns you - on a fixed point - left or right. This method of movement is otherwise known as tank controls. To strafe left or right and look up and down, you had to use the C buttons. On modern controllers the C Buttons have been replaced with an additional stick, allowing for easier optics and traversal. During the play session with my brother, I found the movement in Perfect Dark was easier to reacquaint myself with than that of the weapon options; to fire a gun, you need to press the Z Button, or trigger button. Because of the aforementioned movement controls, the Z Button is mapped to the left hand instead of the right hand, like most modern shooters. The right shoulder button, by contrast, is the aim button. At that time, so many years ago, that layout was golden, but the flipping of the controls made it nigh unplayable. It's a potent and humbling feeling to know you were once the pope-king-master of a game only to find yourself an utter garbage peasant picking it up years later.
In my research, I discovered something about the Perfect Dark I never knew. Rare, the game's developer (and also the developer of Golden Eye) made available to players a controller scheme, unlike anything I've ever seen. Predicting that navigating through the levels might be clunky on the N64 controller, there was an option to play with two controllers while playing in a single-player game. That's right, in each of my hands I could have held an N64 controller and ultimately been given access to two control sticks:
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Rare created, out of two N64 controllers, what modern controllers would eventually evolve to. And, it turns out the controller layout is identical in both Perfect Dark and Golden Eye! I spent thousands of hours with these games as a kid, unburdened by adulting and I NEVER knew, I never knew about the two-controller option. We had four controllers at home, I could have done it at any time. When I did experience playing with two controllers, it wasn't smooth sailing at first but once I settled, it felt like I was cheating or playing an emulated version of the game. I don't think it was the intended way to play, but I'll never go back to just one N64 controller when it comes to those games. I wonder if this is when the seeds of the Wii controller were planted.
There's a poetic element to the way Nintendo persists, more so than any other brand. It's probably the gaming company I think about most even though my Switch is the least touched console I have. I've gotten older and with my age, my taste for games has changed to offerings of the more complex and nuanced. I'm drawn to story and the human condition and fatal fallacy. I demand from video games more of an emotional journey than that of any movie. I want to remember every game I've played forever. The funniest shit, though, is a game teaching me a new way to play it 20 years later because I was such an impatient brat and probably threw away the player guide right away.
Time to go searching for an N64, two controllers, and a copy of Perfect Dark I can call my own.