Charlie Blast's Territory is definitely quite ugly, but actually doesn't look too bad, when you consider that it's only a 4 megabit game (half a megabyte)... it's the smallest N64 game released in the US in terms of cart size. It's also the only N64 game I know of which requires passwords for saving and doesn't support the Controller Pak; all other games either have on-cart saving, don't support saving at all, or support Controller Paks. But with only half a megabyte for the whole game, you can only do so much.
Also, the PS1 game (um, slightly different game with different characters and levels but the same concept and published by the same company, Kemco, that is) looks fairly similar (but clearly benefits some from the larger media size):
http://www.mobygames.com/images/sho...nds-playstation-screenshot-new-challenges.jpg
I misread your previous post, I thought you meant there were no games where you had to use both the stick and the D-pad at the same time. Anyway, it's been ages since I last played any N64 game, but didn't the D-pad have some sort of function in that Star Wars game which name escapes me, in conjunction with the stick? And I'm not bashing the system. The system is generally fine (although it doesn't have all that many games I personally care about), I just utterly despise that awful controller.
As has been mentioned, Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo do support the dpad, but just for moving the camera. Similarly, in the Zelda games the L button turns the map on and off. L and the d-pad are virtually never mapped to important functions in games, only to things you will almost never touch. Only a very few games which require lots of buttons even think of making you use them and the analog stick too, and those are so few that it's barely even worth mentioning. Nothing first party published does, certainly.
So you don't think ease of use had any say in how Nintendo and Microsoft have designed their controllers, it's all due to how much the PS1 sold?
Yeah, I do think that. I'm sure it's never the only reason, but I do think it's always involved as an important factor in the reasoning. Why did MS drop the six face button layout they had on the first XBox controller for that bizarre layout the S used, and then move them to the shoulders for the 360 controller, and to stick to just four face buttons? Maybe in part because they wanted more shoulder buttons, but also because that was Sony's design, surely. The Wii Classic Controller is even more blatant here; yes, it's half SNES controller, but the other half if a Sony controller. The CC Pro makes this even more obvious.
And as I said, I definitely think that the GC controller was in part an answer to the Playstation pads. Yes, one thing it did was simplify, with that big A button, but it also used that Playstation-like orientation, two shoulder buttons (if just on one side), only four face buttons, etc. They were clearly trying to attract people who were used to the Playstation controller with that one.
And as I said, even Sega... why did they drop two buttons from the DC pad versus the Saturn? I'm not sure why, but "have four face buttons just like Sony" is about the only explanation I can come up with. It was a bad decision certainly; seven buttons isn't enough for everything, and the Saturn's layout was just about perfect.
So, as a result, no gamepads from the past two generations quite match up to the N64 or Saturn 3D controllers for me. Though as I've said, the Wiimote is so different that it's hard to directly compare. As for Microsoft, the 360 controller's fine (for analog games), but my favorite MS gamepad is the original, large Xbox controller... I like the face button layout more, and I'm fine with the large size.
