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Nintendo history you can feel – Super NES, N64, and GameCube controllers become capsule toys

Casey Baseel Jul 23, 2024
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New capsule toy series recreates the most iconic parts of three generations of Nintendo controllers.

Video games are often classified as a strictly audio/visual medium, but as any fan of the hobby who’s been around for more than a single system generation can tell you, there’s a tactile element to gaming too. The unique contours and materials of a console’s controllers can instantly put a smile on your face as they bring back memories of dramatic boss fights, emotional endings, and collaborating and competing with couch co-op friends.

So it was a nice dose of nostalgia a few years back when Nintendo released its Controller Button Collection capsule toy series, replicas of its Famicom and NES controllers.

Of course, the company’s hardware legacy consists of much more than its 8-bit console, and so now they’re back with round two of the Controller Button Collection, featuring the next three Nintendo home-system generations, the Super Famicom/Super NES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube!

Like with the Famicom and NES controllers, which component you’ll get in the new Controller Button Collection is up to chance, as all six of the new items share space inside the same capsule toy machine. However, whereas the 8-bit controllers had their entire form factors chopped into three pieces, this time the designs are more complex, so the focus is on recreating each controller’s most iconic features. In the case of the Super Famicom/Super NES, that means the diamond-layout four face buttons, as it was the first system to use what’s now become nearly a universal standard across the video game industry.

▼ The Super Famicom’s buttons are more colorful, while the Super NES got concave X and Y buttons, to help gamers who weren’t yet accustomed to having so many options under their right thumb differentiate them from the A and B buttons without having to look down.

Moving on to the Nintendo 64, we get a replica of the company’s first analog stick, accompanied by the big red start button. Since the Nintendo 64’s digital D-pad wasn’t particularly unique, the second capsule toy is for its face button array, which was so designed for intuitive use as a camera controller in the pre-dual-analog stick days, and which, perhaps not coincidentally, was applicable to six-button fighters at the height of the fighting game craze, such as Killer Instinct 2, which was released for the Nintendo 64 back when Nintendo was still the series’ publisher.

And last, for the GameCube, the focus is on the right half of the controller, with its secondary analog stick and distinct golf course aerial view-like face button cluster.

The new Controller Button Collection lineup, along with the Famicom/NES capsule toys in their own machine, is on sale at the Nintendo Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto specialty stores, as well as the smaller Nintendo shop at Narita airport, presumably at the same 500-yen (US$3.15) price point as the first round was at its initial release. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for retro-style Nintendo controllers that you can play actual games with, Nintendo of Japan has finally relaxed its policies for who’s allowed to buy the Famicom Switch controllers.

Source: Nintendo via IT Media
Images: Nintendo
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