Okay, I’ve had some free time to ponder this thing, the Revolution controller, and I am now blown away. I wasn’t last night, I was a little bit this morning, but the promotional video has me hooked. You know, this one. Of course, it’s designed to hook me, but whatever. I am officially frothing.

Also, there’s an X and Y on the controller toward the end. WTXY!?

More after teh cut.
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As I left from work last night, I was anticipating two things:

1. Actually playing Crystal Chronicles with a friend, and

2. The Revolution’s controller.

Crystal Chronicles was actually very enjoyable. I miss co-op gaming a lot. The GBA requirement is lame, yes, it all could’ve been done onscreen; however, I’m not here to fix things, I just take them as they come and try to enjoy them.

We gave 4CR and IGN a query before we started though, and there it was, like a big white enigma. I read off the features. They seemed… interesting, at least. Sounded like the Power Glove actually. However, the PG was a nerdy (awesomely nerdy though) looking fashion statement that I could never ever get the hang of back in the day, and I don’t think about it much anymore.

My knee-jerk reaction was: meh. Weird. I had a problem with the fact that it looked like a remote control. I know that there’s more to it than I was seeing at the time, and I have yet to see it in action. Nintendo is obviously not afraid to experiment though, and it sometimes pays off. Sceptical? Yes, I can be. The games though, the games are what it’s all about. I’m not going to say anything until I really know how this will be used.

My second reaction was: how the heck does this support the backwards compatibility!? I really can’t imagine playing an N64 game without its controller. I want the 4-button configuration of the SNES. I think though, that this will be taken care of somehow. Adaptors for the port on the bottom that connect to older Nintendo controllers would be just about perfect.

I sat down to enjoy FFCC, a fruit of one of Nintendo’s experiments.

So, two strikes for me last night. Now, it is the next morning. I’m taking another look and feeling much more inspired by it. I have lots of suggestions/hopes that I really want, because the expandability really makes me imagine great things. I’m also liking the fact that it can be use one-handed (vertically) or old-school two-handed (horizontally).

Here are my button-by-button thoughts. Seeing as how this isn’t even the revolutionary part, it might seem a little odd to tear into just the button design. This is just one aspect of a controller and a system (and a company) with many facets, but it’s the part I’m most familiar with. And I think I’m going to love it.

THE BUTTON-BY-BUTTON:
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