1990: SNES Button Layout With a D-pad on the left, four face buttons set in a diamond on the right, two shoulder buttons and a Start and Select button in the center, the SNES controller was pretty much the template for every controller that came after it. While there might be a few more shoulder triggers and analog sticks in today's offerings, the basic controller still remains nearly the same in terms of layout design some 21 years later. When looking to design the "perfect controller" look no further than the SNES pad. It remains one of the most balanced ones ever made. [Source]

1972: Atari Paddle It's funny to recall that video game controllers were relatively primitive in the beginning and didn't have a million buttons, but it's true. Rotatable only up to about 330 degrees, the Paddle kicked off video games, period. Classics like Pong and Breakout didn't need fancy gyroscopes, a wheel that turned to the left and right was more than sufficient. [Source]

1997: N64 Rumble Pak Up until now, there was no real way to feel the action of video games through a home console controller. Originally released with Star Fox 64, the Rumble Pak sent vibrations through the controller to make the action feel that much more realistic. Sure, it was another add-on, but boy did it playing games with it feel intense. Needless to say, all of today's modern controllers come standard with rumble. [Source]

1998: PlayStation 1 Dual Analog/DualShock Nintendo might have pioneered the analog stick, but it was Sony's PS1 controller that added a pair of them. With the second analog, sucky in-game camera angles became a non-issue. Have beef with the view? Just use the second analog to get another perspective. Always the borrower, Sony even decided to add a little rumble into its DualShock controller — no add-on required. [Source]

1998: Dance Dance Revolution Mat Like the Power Pad, the DDR mat wasn't so much of a default controller for most games, but for Konami's Dance Dance Revolution game, it was superb. Could you have ever imagined jumping around in your living room, your whole body sweating and your legs sore as hell after a heated session through Smile.dk's "Butterfly"? Yeah, exercising with games is fun, isn't it? [Source]

2000: Logitech GT Force Steering Wheel Polypony Digital's Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec really pushed the boundaries of racing game sims and to drive exotic sports cars with an analog controller just didn't feel right. Logitech's force feedback wheel pioneered racing rigs in the living room. Back then, even if you knew how to drive properly, doing a few laps in a 2000 Diablo GT Lamborghini with a GT Force was as hardcore as it got and it remains so today with only the biggest of racing fans splurging for the full pedal and steering wheel setup. [Source]

2003: EyeToy Unique for its time, Sony's EyeToy camera for the PS2 can be looked at as the father to the entire motion control gaming industry. It was the first peripheral to offer controller-less gameplay. Although games were extremely limited, without the EyeToy, there would probably be no Kinect for the Xbox 360 today. Having a camera watch you wasn't creepy anymore, it became normal. [Source]

2005: Guitar Hero While Harmonix didn't make the first guitar-based instrument game (that was Konami and its GuitarFreaks arcade game in Japan), Guitar Hero and its plastic guitar was the game that popularized the music rhythm genre and made it socially acceptable to pay $70 for a video game bundle. [Source]

2002: GameCube Wavebird Always at the forefront of pioneering new controller tech, Nintendo's Wavebird was the first wireless console controller to operate without lag or disruption because it radio frequency instead of infrared. Even though Nintendo had to forgo rumble for wireless, the Wavebird still struck a cord with gamers and paved the way for all next-gen controllers to be cord-free by default. [Source]

2006: Wii Remote First shown at the Tokyo Game Shown in 2005, the Wii Remote heralded motion control gaming to the masses. Nintendo proved that controllers don't always have to be connected, but can be separated for full body movement. Consequently, it also popularized the term "waggle." While it didn't provide true 1:1 (Nintendo fixed that with the MotionPlus dongle and Wii RemotePlus), the Wii Remote did have a speaker, a feature that brought sound effects even closer to the gamer (i.e. No More Heroes' cellphone ringing). [Source]

2010: PlayStation Move Building on the success of Nintendo's Wii Remote, Sony's Move provides more accurate 1:1 motion tracking without the tethered wires. Its glowing rubber ball tip might appear juvenile at first, but when it comes to successfully recognizing your every movement, it makes the Wii Remote look extremely outdated. [Source]

1977: Atari Joystick Before analog sticks and directional pads, there was the joystick: a long vertical stick that you wobbled forward, backward, left and right. That was it. The Atari joystick had one button and was all anybody needed to know that video games would become be big hit. Things were definitely simpler back then. [Source]

1983: Famicom/NES D-Pad A D-pad is what happens when you smoosh a joystick flat. Instead of controlling game movement with a clenched fist, your left thumb did all the work, while the right thumb was free to button mash to kingdom come. To say the D-pad provided a huge ergonomic advantage over the joystick is an understatement. [Source]

1984: NES Zapper Lightgun Oh, Duck Hunt, how we love thee. The NES Zapper is the grand daddy to every single GunCon, Wii Zapper, Sharp Shooter or firearm-shaped controller. Unlike the the Wii Remote or the PS3's Move cursor, light guns were perfect for shooting games because it worked like a real gun: aim, pull trigger, kill enemies. Too bad there was just one problem: all shooting games had to be on-rails, because there was no analog for controlling movement. Still, all those hours spent in later years with GunCons in Time Crisis owe their existence to the Zapper. [Source]

1987: NES Power Pad Yet another relic for fitness games of yesteryear, the Power Pad was like a DDR mat, but instead of four arrows, it had eight buttons on one side and 12 on the other. We've never tried it, but with only 11 games released and many claims that it didn't even work properly, it's no surprise that many gamers have never even heard of it. But it's safe to say that without the Power Pad, the DDR mat might not have been created. [Source]

1989: NES Power Glove Another NES controller with "power" in its name that didn't grant gamers any special powers but a ton of frustration. Hailed as the first controller to give your hand gestures the ability to control game commands, the Power Glove failed because 1) it had to be "programmed" by inputting codes and 2) it was product-placed in The Wizard with such awesome motion controls, but in reality it was just an ugly glove with an NES pad attached that didn't even work as advertised. [Source]

1990: Sega Genesis Turbo Button With a simple toggle, the Turbo Button allowed players to breeze through games by activating rapid-fire or pulling off super combos without any skill. Often considered "cheating" by most gamers, the Turbo Button was a neat trick back in the day, but the unfair "cheating" advantage is probably a reason we don't see turbo buttons on today's controllers. [Source]

1996: N64 Analog Stick As video games leaped from 2D sprites into 3D polygonal worlds, controllers needed to evolve in order for players to manipulate characters not only on the X and Y-plane but on the Z-depth as well. In many ways, the analog stick was like a return for the joystick, but thumb friendly like the D-pad. Without analog control, games like Super Mario probably wouldn't have successfully made the transition from 2D to 3D very well. [Source]

1998: Dreamcast VMU Remembered as one of the oddest controllers created for Sega's last console, the VMU was actually a memory card with a little monochrome screen. When detached from the controller, the VMU could act like as a limited portable (i.e. raising a Chao in Sonic Adventures). It was also the first time a memory card was slotted into the controller and not the console — a design Microsoft would later copy with its original Xbox "Duke" controller. [Source]

2005: Xbox 360 Considered to be one of the most balanced controllers ever created, the 360 gamepad comes with one major innovation: it's logo/guide/home button. As history has shown, both the PS3 DualShock3 and Wii Remote received their own equivalent home buttons. The guide button just about birthed all console menus dashboards. For the first time, console controllers felt sort of like multimedia remotes because you didn't have to do a hard reset to navigate to non-gaming features. [Source]

2007: Rock Band Instrument Set Who would have thought forking over $150+ for a set of plastic drums, guitar and mic would be so fun. Jamming to plastic instruments went to the next level, above and beyond Guitar Hero's guitar. In fact, by 2010, Rock Band was so popular that Harmonix decided to release Rock Band 3 — a game with real instruments that taught you how to play real music. But after years of momentum, the music rhythm genre's become a little stale and is taking a backseat in the vault. What's next for plastic instruments? That's anybody's guess. [Source]

2010: Kinect "You are the controller" is the tagline for Microsoft's Xbox 360 motion tracking add-on. Hacker friendly and voice controllable, Kinect is paving the way to fulfilling our Minority Report dreams. And with hot games like Dance Central that use your entire body to move and groove, who needs DDR mats ever again or any other exercise machine for that matter? [Source]

2012: Wii U Controller At the center of Nintendo's new controller is a 16:9, 6.2-inch touchscreen capable of beaming content to and from the console. The Wii U controller is an evolutionary mashup between the Wii Remote's motion controls and the DS's touchscreen and it's poised to revolutionize how we interact with our games, yet again. [Source]