The Double N64 Controller Is Going To Haunt Our Nightmares

There is something so off-putting about someone messing with something you know and love right? Something was perfectly good, amazing even, and then someone comes along to mess with it - like the band Disturbed doing a cover of The Sound of Silence. Why guys, just why? And here, one hardware modder has made a horrifying version of N64 controller that makes us feel a little queasy, but turns out to be pretty cool.

First spotted by GamesRadar, this Frankenstein's monster of gaming is a custom made version of the three handled N64 controller. It's surprisingly well made and was leant to the YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting to explore its actual purpose in games - and yeah, it actually does have a purpose outside of looking sort of weird.

Stop Skeletons From Fighting holding the modded N64 controller

Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64 is the perfect example of where the Franken-controller comes in handy, because for some reason the team at Rare had the idea to allow players to use two controllers at the same time. Why? So that players could use two analogue sticks to traverse the 3D environment - something we really take for granted these days. This made walking around as Bond, easier and more fluid, and it wasn't just Goldeneye that had this potential.

Perfect Dark also had the same functionality with these two controllers and works even better than Goldeneye because of some random janky aspects to menus and button functionality in the Bond game. Robotron 64 also had this functionality somehow, while Sin and Punishment might have the remains of the unfinished two analogue stick support in the code somewhere.

The pièce de résistance of the Franken-controller though is Star Wars: Episode One Racer which has a cheat code to allow you to use two controllers at once. The two separate engines on this controller are then controlled by two different sticks which seems genius, honestly. Even if the 64 modded controller looks incredibly freaky, we can't deny that the story behind its functionality is really cool.

You should check out the video from Stop Skeletons From Fighting because it makes a lot of great points about the N64 controller and transition between no analogue sticks, the N64 controller, and now our modern controllers where two sticks are standard.

Topics: News