General Gaming Gamepads

The typical array of controllers used with video game systems over the years. There are two main classes, universal and specialized, and notable one-off gimmicks worth mention also appear here.

Compare Stock Control Settings.

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Universal (used as the out-of-the-box controller for at least two major gaming systems)

• Joystick The classic. Simply a small stick (typically sans buttons) with the base's surface bearing any number of buttons, held with one to three digits, and generally digital microswitch-based. Seen as early as the first arcades and the early game systems. Still seen today as optional controllers for all three seventh-generation home systems and several modern PC games, in both digital and analog varieties. The Neo Geo was probably the last major system to use it as a standard.
  • Modern arcade cabinets still tend to use this system. Any given fighting game with circular inputs (Quarter-circle/Half-circle/Full-circle * X + action button) is likely to have been designed for a joystick first and foremost and ports of such games to D-Pad machines tend to result in skinned thumbs or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
  • Throttle: Intended as a left-hand controller for flight simulators in HOTAG (hands on throttle and grip) scheme. Range from 1-axis handle to several parallel handles to very feature-rich varieties.
• Keyboard It was natural for PC gaming to use the keyboard as a controller, since it was already the standard input device. Many PC games still just require the Keyboard; keyboards for consoles are typically add-ons supported by few to no games, though the Odyssey² actually had a built-in keyboard. The Wii allows USB keyboards for use with the Wii channels while the Play Station 3's USB ports easily accept them, and the Play Station 3 and Xbox 360 have mini keyboard attachments for their gamepads, not to mention a number of hideous monstrosities designed for Phantasy Star Online (one of which is basically an official Nintendo GameCube pad stretched apart to fit a full-size keyboard in the middle).
  • Keypad A numeric calculator/telephone layout on some part of the controller. Used mainly on the Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 5200 and Atari Jaguar. Not seen since on home consoles, due to its bulk and unnecessary complexity for games at the time (or insufficient complexity compared to a Keyboard.) Yet it has had a resurgence in the field of mobile gaming, since cell phones of course have keypads; laptop keyboards usually don't, and an external keypad may as well be advanced.
  • Keypad / Gamepad One of the oldest game controller types (see below); modern versions are used as auxiliary controllers in keyboard+mouse or keyboard+joystick schemes - a generic counterpart of left-hand throttle for HOTAG. Usually has few keys beyond WASD and fire, but superior ergonomics and extra controls give reasons to use it instead of the good old keyboard. May have mode switch and/or software macro programming and profile loading. A number of them are referenced there on The Other Wiki. Construction and features vary wildly, e.g.:
    • Intellivision Hand Controller: 12 keys (with removable legend overlay) + D-Pad (16 directions). Made for the original Intellivision console (1979). It was the first console with D-Pad, which as unfamiliar interface somewhat reduced its popularity; there was even a 3rd-party detachable joystick top for it. Included for completeness.
    • Terratec Mystify Claw: hand-fitting piece with buttons,
    • Saitek Pro Gamer Command Unit: 20 keys + shift + analog mini-stick
    • Nostromo SpeedPad N50: 10 keys + scroll wheel + D-Pad; N52 / Belkin n52te: 14 keys + scroll wheel + D-Pad
    • Genius ErgoMedia 500: 11 keys + mouse wheel + D-Pad + sound card (for headset, mic + stereo connectors). Modes: Default + 3 programmed (mode-uploading software works only in Windows, since Wine doesn't support USB HID).
    • Razer Tartarus: 15 keys + D-Pad. Tartarus V2: 19 programmable keys, D-Pad (thumb), scroll wheel (index finger).
• Mouse Once mice (and trackballs) came along, and allowed precision movement, having one became the standard controller requirement for almost every PC game made since. Combined with a keyboard, this immediately found its blood and essence as the default controller scheme for First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy, to the extent that people who play FPSs with Gamepads are all but incapable of beating mouse & keyboard gamers. Some set-top consoles allowed one or the other for certain games. The Super Famicom/SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, and Playstation had a mouse. The Dreamcast had a mouse and keyboard. The Playstation 2 and 3 allow PC units to be hooked up through their USB connectors to play some PC ports. Gaming mice need high-resolution sensors and thus usually have internal DPI switch. Depending on how far the manufacturer wants to go with ergonomy (and show off) may feature weight balance and even size adjustment. Commonly includes a pair of thumb buttons and/or "double click"/"triple click" buttons.
  • Mouse / Keypad A 101-button mouse could replace your keyboard, but moderate numbers are more convenient. The common arrangement for many buttons are circle (after RPG/MMO menu) and 12-button keypad, but there are more; varieties include:
    • SteelSeries WoWmouse—more of the top many-buttoned mouse than keypad-mice, but it got 15 buttons and LEDs; was built for World of Warcraft fans and for any other purpose isn't better than normal mice due to lack of software support.
    • Razer Naga series—mildly Sci-Fi design with thumb keypad; 5 or 7 buttons + 6 or 12 thumb-buttons.
      • Naga Trinity has changeable side panels on a pin connector: with 2 (forward/back), 7 (menu "wheel") and 12 buttons (3x4 "grid"). Theoretically, the benefits of modular design are here: now they can separately make and sell new mouse "cores" (upgraded sensors/processors, or more integrated devices: see Mouse Phone below), cases and side panels (it would be trivial to add variants with D-Pad, HAT-switch, extra scroll wheel^[1] for 2 analog + 2 quasi-analog DoF total, WinAmp style media buttons line^[2] and so on, should noticeable demand for these exist) — but practically, logistics of modularity depends on such design(s) becoming popular first, and until then it's just made the mouse slightly overpriced, since vast majority of customers will probably use one variant all the time.
    • WarMouse Meta (aka "OpenOfficeMouse") -- has keypad (8 buttons) instead of main buttons on both sides of the wheel/middle button, mini-joystick on the thumb side; 18 buttons total; its software is Open Source and has ready settings for lots of games and applications, including OpenOffice. Crazy Awesome, but sadly discontinued.
    • UtechSmart High Precision and Uranus series, Anker CG100, Perixx MX-2000II, perhaps Logitech G502: not just a bunch of buttons, nor quite a keypad - they are clustered around the thumb rest.
    • 4 thumb buttons group: Perixx MX-3200.
    • 6 (3 x 2 rows): Logitech G602.
    • 12 (4 x 3 rows): Logitech G600 "MMO Gaming Mouse", some of Razer Naga series (mildly Sci-Fi design), UtechSmart Venus series.
    • Mouse / Numpad: Sanwa Supply NT-MA1 / iOne Scorpius N4^[3] Numerical Keypad Mouse with Tenkey Pad And Large Numbers / Adesso AKP-170 USB Numeric Keypad and Optical Mouse (all 3 had but cosmetic differences^[4], if better ergonomics on the last one); also apparently HP did something similar earlier. Inputs are not usable simultaneously, but it saves time on moving the hand from mouse to keypad and back, and adds two peripherals in the space of one. On the downside, your keypad slides around as easily as a mouse and to avoid accidental pushing keys either are long stroke (Sanwa/iOne) or mouse top doubling as keypad sized molly-guard for soft touch keys (Adesso); strangely, no one simply added a grip switch to let the device know when it's held like a mouse. Reviews vary; the people who have to do spreadsheets liked it more.
  • Mouse / D-Pad: has a thumb D-Pad. For example, A4/X7 Oscar X-755K.
  • Motion Controller First well known attempt for home consoles was the infamous Power Glove. Brought the gift of Mouse to the impoverished wastes of consoledom. Used successfully so far with the Wiimote/Nunchuck, the Sixaxis, Dual Shock 3, and iPod/iPhone. The Play Station 3 now also has the Move controller.
  • Mouse Phone: there were a few (for example). With the rise of VoIP, a phone receiver with its own keypad and LCD screen folding into a mouse began to look like a reasonably convenient and table-space-saving solution. Since USB naturally allows multiple devices to be plugged into unmodified computer with one cable, it's not even that sophisticated. Whether it's convenient and whether you want more moving parts in your mouse is YMMV, of course.
• Touch Screen (or stylus): Similar to a touch pad on a laptop, this allows greater precision than an analog stick for pointing, but can be cumbersome for movement. Can also function as a Keypad. Used with PDAs, the Nintendo DS (and its successor the 3DS), and "intelligent" devices like tactile iPods, tablets and smartphones. Comes in multiple varieties:
  • Resistive: thin film pressed inward creates a signal. Very precise and supports any reasonably pointy object for input, but easy to scratch and usually not multi-touch capable. Most older devices use resistive digitizers; the touchscreen of the DS/3DS is of this type.
  • Capacitive: a conductive object pressed against glass that disrupts an electrical grid. Often capable of multi-touch. Requires a bare finger or a special capacitive stylus to use, the latter of which requires a thicker, fatter tip than a resistive stylus by necessity. Popularized by trackpads and especially the iPhone. The current standard for smartphones and tablets.
  • Optical: a grid of lasers surrounds the screen, and their obstruction creates input. Can be activated by anything that can block said lasers. Most notably featured on some models of HP TouchSmart all-in-one desktops.
  • Electro-Magnetic Resonance: Not a touchscreen in the typical sense, for it relies on generating an electromagnetic field that is used to communicate and get positional information from a specialized pen, as well as powering the pen in some instances. Contact is registered by a sensor behind the pen nib, which is also pressure-sensitive for controlling brush width and/or opacity. Some advanced models can even sense the pen's tilt and rotation. The digitizer board that generates the EMR field sits behind the screen as opposed to the aforementioned digitizer types sitting in front, allowing a resistive or capacitive digitizer to handle finger input until the pen comes into range and disables the touch digitizer for palm rejection purposes. Wacom drawing tablets and Cintiq monitors are the most prevalent example, along with most Windows Tablet PCs based on their technology.
• Gamepad All of your controls in one piece of plastic, tends to evolve uniformly across the entire industry.
  • D-Pad Controller A Direction-Pad (or similar pattern of four buttons) on the left and at least two face buttons on the right (or center and right). Simple, yet still allowing for a fair bit of control, this became the standard for years. Started with Nintendo "Game & Watch" series, popularized with the Famicom/NES, and used notably with the Sega Master System (although the pause was left on the console for some reason), Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Mega Drive / Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16, Neo-Geo Pocket (and color), Wonder Swan (two or four face buttons depending on how you hold it), and the Wii if you turn the Wiimote sideways.
    • BTW, while Nintendo invented the D-Pad with the Game & Watch, Sega coined the term D-Pad with the Master System (Nintendo seems to prefer the seemingly more trademarkable "+Control Pad").
    • Arguably, Mattel invented the D-Pad for the Intellivision. It was mechanically different from the familiar design, but functionally the same (except that it allowed for 16 separate directions instead of 8).
  • SNES D-Pad Perhaps the most common controller type. It consists of the D-Pad on the left, at least two shoulder buttons or triggers, and at least four face buttons, usually in the shape of a cross. Popularized with the SNES, used with the Sega Saturn, first PlayStation controller, Game Boy Advance ("Start" and "Select" are face buttons), and DS. Beginning with the Dreamcast, many were given analog buttons.
  • Analog Same as the SNES D-Pad, but there is an analog Joystick near the D-Pad (either above or below it). This was also when rumble feedback became popular. Used with the Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn analog pad (most commonly featured with Ni GHTS), Dreamcast, PSP, and Nintendo 3DS. The Wii's Nunchuck attachment is an unconventional version. (If you count a more basic gamepad and a more TV remote-esque design, the Vectrex and Philips CD-i had analog thumbsticks prior to the N64.)
  • Dual Analog (Type 1) Same as above, but with a second analog stick just below the face buttons. Used first with the Playstation Dual Analog, then used with the DualShock 1/2/3, Sixaxis, and the Wii Classic Controller.
  • Dual Analog (Type 2) Swaps the D-Pad with the analog stick directly below it. This variant appears on the Game Cube pad, Xbox pad, and Xbox 360 pad.
• Accelerometer/Tilt Sensor: Most notably used in the WiiMote and the Apple iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; allows the user to control the game by moving the entire controller/handheld. Some Play Station 3 games, such as Heavy Rain can also be controlled by tilting the controller. Has been featured earlier in Kirby Tilt 'n Tumble, and some third-party Atari VCS/2600 joysticks had a mercury-based tilt sensor and no base.

Specialized (seldom an out-of-the-box controller, but has been used for at least two systems)

• Floor Pad A pad on the floor, so you use your feet instead of your hands. Notable examples are the Famicom/NES Power Pad, the Dance Dance Revolution/Pump It Up pad, and the Wii Balance Board.
• Zapper Named for the NES's Zapper. A toy gun used to shoot at stuff on the screen.
  • Light Guns The first variants, that used the refresh rate to create a point of light to tell where the gun was aiming on the screen. Not used anymore since only direct-view CRTs have a refresh they can detect. (Rear-projection CRTs will not work.) Used in arcades, the NES, Sega Master System, Atari XE Game System, the Mega Drive/Genesis (called the Menacer) and Namco's GunCon 1 & 2.
  • Sensor Guns Uses other methods to detect where the gun is pointing, notably a sensor near the TV. Seen in the SNES (the Super Scope), GunCon 3, and the IR sensor of the Wii Remote (which can become a zapper with an attachment, and technically is the reverse—it uses a sensor in the remote to see two IR lights in the misleadingly named “sensor bar.”) Also of note are some guns that are actually giant joysticks (like for Crossbow and Silent Scope).
• Microphone Rarely used for gaming before the sixth generation, due to voice recognition and broadband not being that well developed before. Even without gaming, it can be used to talk to others online, such as with Xbox Live. For gaming, they have been available for the N64, PS2/3, XB360, GCN, Wii, and built into the DS (and their sucessors) and Famicom.
• Camera A camera that can be used for gaming. While the Gameboy, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and even DSi have them, the PS2's EyeToy was probably the first to be used as a controller in the mainstream (although Intel played around with it years before). Microsoft aims to make this input method mainstream with Project Natal/Kinect, but this peripherical is more oriented into being a capture motion control (see below)
• Paddle Not the D-Pad in the form of a flat nub, this is a dial you simply spin from side to side. Used as early as the Etch-a-Sketch, this became popular in gaming with Pong, shipped alongside the joystick in many Atari 2600 bundles, and is still used today as a DS attachment for a Space Invaders remake.
• Steering Wheel An overgrown paddle, used for racing, of course. Seen as soon as racing hit arcades and for many game systems since, and it almost always comes with pedals (sometimes even with gear shift, usually sequential via paddles or stick, sometimes an H-gate stick shift). More advanced models have proper force-feedback to help convey the feeling of traction, as well as greater degrees of rotation (cheaper wheels are generally 180, 240, or 270 degrees, while the higher-end wheels have 900 degrees). The Wiimote counts to some degree, as it can be placed on a steering wheel, as highlighted with Mario Kart Wii.
• Musical Instruments Just that, musical instruments, ranging from simple toys to professional MIDI gear. Most famously used in Guitar Hero and Rock Band, though featured earlier in various Bemani games. Used for almost any game system for the 7th gen, and earlier for the PlayStation 1, PS2 and Gamecube.
• Flight Stick Similar to a Joystick in function, but shaped for a firm grip with the whole hand. Early examples had only one button (and sometimes a thumb button too, not even a trigger!), but nowadays they can come with four or five plus trigger. Other additions include a hat switch in four directions, a throttle lever on the base, more buttons on the base, and mechanisms that allow the player to twist the joystick itself clockwise and counterclockwise on the base, adding a third axis to "front-and-back" and "left-and-right". It's used mainly to simulate flying an aircraft, although it can be used for other games. Very advanced examples may support force-feedback for more realism in older aircraft and for helicopter trim, or use a force-sensing transducer with a very rigid stick that doesn't budge much to better simulate the one in the F-16 and later jet fighters.
  • Yoke Looks sort of like a steering wheel, except that it can also be slid up and down its shaft, just like the yokes in really big aircraft.
  • Flight Control System Consists of a joystick/yoke, rudder pedals (like car pedals, only with toebrake axes and the main pedals sliding forward and back inverse to each other for the actual rudder control) and an independent throttle with one or more big sliders/rotaries, a miniature analog stick or Track Point for mouse or targeting system control, and even more buttons. Can get very expensive, especially if it's a licensed replica of jet-fighter components (see: Thrustmaster). At least one arcade game, Afterburner Climax, has a basic one built into it.
    • Virtual World pods provide those AND a whole bunch of MFDs to play BattleTech or a racing game called Red Planet.
    • Console gamers got a taste with the Xbox game Steel Battalion, which required a ludicrous, dedicated two-flightstick controller (the left one moving only left and right to steer, the right one not centering and used to aim and fire weapons) with a sliding manual gear shifter to simulate the cockpit of a Real Robot, complete with an eject button with a flip-open cover. (The original plan required the player to break glass to activate it.)
• Biological sensors: Ranging from simple heartbeat monitors to brain EEGs, these are generally rather hard to control, and as such are usually gimmicks. Bio-feedback sensors have also appeared in the medical industry; primarily used as a diagnostic tool, the patient is connected to the sensors and then uses his brain to perform various tasks (such as popping on-screen balloons) in order to measure brain function and alpha/beta wave balance.

Unique (Only used once, as a one-off gimmick or merely yet to catch on)

• R.O.B.: After The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, nobody was willing to buy a home game console in the United States, so Nintendo originally released the NES bundled with a robot (and a game called Super Mario Bros.), who would be the original focus of marketing. Needless to say, it worked. R.O.B. was rather gimmicky and unnecessary in practice, but he did his duty.
• Wii Remote, more commonly called the Wiimote. It's a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot of controllers—along with the signature motion control gyros, it has a pointer/sensor, a built-in speaker and rumble, can be flipped on the side to simulate a NES controller, and has an increasing array of attachments to add a thumbstick and more buttons, more motion control, a classic controller layout, and other features. Despite the general skepticism of the Wii remote when it was first introduced, Nintendo's runaway success has prompted other developers to Follow the Leader with their own motion controllers.
  • The Nerf Switch Shot is a lightgun shell for the Wii where the Wiimote can be swapped for a conventional Nerf dart shooter. Unfortunately it's only really good in the latter capacity, as the trigger mechanism for the B button has a tendency to break.
  • The PlayStation Move is a peripheral controller for the Play Station 3 that works much like a Wiimote in reverse; while the Wii uses an IR emitter near the TV screen and a sensor in each controller for position tracking (in addition to the attendant gaggle of gyroscopes and tilt sensors), the Move uses a camera near the screen and lighted, colored orbs at the end of the controller. This does give the advantage of more precise position tracking, as the Move does not need to be pointed at the camera for it to determine the position. Unfortunately, due to this, the Move is unable to emulate some of the Wiimote's modes, and it has earned the derisive Fan Nickname "The Lollipop" thanks to Penny Arcade's lampooning of the controller, and statements made by Sony executives about the Wiimote.
• 3D Mouse/Motion Controller: Covers devices like the Spacetec IMC SpaceBall and SpaceOrb 360 (which has a PlayStation variant known as the ASCII Sphere), Logitech CyberMan 2, and 3Dconnexion's various "3D mice". (Incidentally, Spacetec IMC was bought by Labtec, who was then bought by Logitech and then spun off as 3Dconnexion, which may explain the similarities.) The distinguishing feature is a ball/puck that senses motion/force on all six degrees of freedom, allowing for intuitive multi-axis control. The SpaceOrb 360 was even packaged with a demo of Descent 2, and for good reason-it soon found itself as a must-have controller for Descent fans due to the controller matching up well with the nature of the ship's movement. Most of them are designed as professional 3D CAD/modeling input devices with little game support, but software exists to work around that.
  • 3Dconnexion also have SpacePilot Pro and SpaceMouse Pro. Not only do they belong to one of the most awesome manual input devices types ever, but look the part as well. It's full 6 DoF manipulator mounted on top of a nice keypad. As the name implies, fit for space simulators (though practically having all 6x analog axis is overkill). But it's actually made for 3D design and doesn't look sturdy enough to be used as a gaming manipulator..
    • Those are recommended for use not instead of the mouse, but along with it, as an auxiliary controller manipulating the selected object in a natural-feeling way, while the mouse works with GUI - thus the whole setup is 8 DoF.
• Air Keyboard Conqueror / Mimi Wireless Gaming Keyboard: In case you thought "101-button mouse" mentioned above was only a joke, this weird gadget by Veho / Cideko is a close call. It's a gamepad and laptop keyboard melded into one, with built-in gyro mouse.
• Motion Capture: Uses a camera and specialized image recognition software to track selected parts of a player's body, eliminating the need for any controller and theoretically allowing better interaction. In practice, however, more calibration is required than for other motion sensing systems and a certain type of environment is required for optimal function. Earlier implementations were one-off gimmicks or neat little distractions but the technology arguably caught on (though not in a terribly big way) with Sony's Eye Toy, which had it as one of the device's capabilities. Microsoft's Kinect uses this system in lieu of a handheld motion sensor, which has given it a certain popularity in the dance-oriented rhythm games fandom due to be the main controller of the Xbox 360 and Xbox One editions of Just Dance and similarly dance-oriented rhythm games.
• Card Readers: Originally used to transfer character or item data from collectible cards to arcade cabinets, with other systems used for actual control. Improvements in technology have resulted in cabinets with a large reading surface upon which cards can be placed and moved to control in-game entities. The Sangokushi Taisen series is one of the more notable users of this system.
• Punch Pads: Used in the Arcade Game Sonic Blast Man and some models of the original Street Fighter. Some reasons why this didn't catch on were that players would injure themselves or damage the cabinets.

See also the Game Console Controller Family Tree.

1. ↑ vertical or horizontal axis, your choice!
2. ↑ come to think of it, that extra scroll wheel could double as a volume slider…
3. ↑ or N4WL for wireless
4. ↑ 19 keys with "000" and backspace; also, toggled Num Lock before and after each key press for some reason