The Nintendo 64 controller (NUS-005) is the standard game controller included with the Nintendo 64.
Released by Nintendo in late 1996 in Japan and North America, and 1997 in Europe, it features ten buttons, one digital Control Stick[cn 1] and a directional pad, all laid out in a M shape.



The controller for the Nintendo 64 was designed to be held in several different positions.
It was designed around Super Mario 64. It could be held by the two outer grips,
allowing use of the digital D-pad, right-hand face buttons and the L and R shoulder buttons (but not the Z trigger or analog stick).

It could be also held by the center and right-hand grip, allowing the use of the single control stick, the right hand-buttons, the R shoulder button,
and the Z trigger on the rear (but not the L shoulder button or D-pad). Finally, one controller could be held in each hand with a thumb on each analog stick
and index fingers on the Z trigger. This setup allowed dual-analog control on some first-person shooters such as Perfect Dark.

More often than not the analog stick was used in games while in some,
both the control stick and directional pad could be interchangeable (ex: Mortal Kombat Trilogy).

Very few games used the directional pad exclusively; two examples are the 3D puzzle game Tetrisphere and the side-scrolling platformer Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.