Nintendo, who had influenced the industry before, had done it again. Sony's PSX pad looked laughable compared to it. As a result, Sony followed suit with an unsuccessful analogue pad before releasing, in conjunction with Gran Turismo, the Dual Shock Analogue pad. This was another pad that was superbly designed and executed. The Dual Shock motors didn't require batteries, feeding power directly off the machine, and the mushroom-shaped dual sticks were very comfortable and also doubled up as buttons, increasing the action button count to 10. Although games on the PS could be played with a regular joypad, the Dual Shock joypad is far better suited to the avalanche of 3D games flooding the PlayStation market.

The evolution of PC controllers is a much more complex side of the industry. Because there's no governing hardware body, companies release joysticks, joypads and other such devices as and when they're needed. PCs are much more complex, with games demanding more controls than a simple joypad could give. As a result, most PC games tend to use the keyboard for the more mundane tasks, like targeting craft or selecting buildings, and use controllers for the vital tasks, such as movement and key actions. In the past few years, the mouse/ keyboard combination has become a popular choice, especially in strategy games and first-person shooters. Remember, Doom was a very basic form of 3D which had auto aim for height - just imagine not using a mouse for new games like Half-Life and Championship Manager 3.

Throughout the past 20 years, besides the bog standard controllers, there have always been novelty efforts. Light guns have been around for ever, but had never been any good until Namco's delicious G-Con 45; the early 360 NES Max was probably the worst controller I've ever encountered; there were infra-red controllers which never worked; Multi Taps have been used to allow four players to play on one machine (although the four controller ports as standard on new consoles renders these devices useless); 3D controllers such as ASCII Sphere for PlayStation and the Frag Master for the PC; steering wheels; Namcos Jog-Con for Ridge Racer 4; and there's even going to be a fishing rod available for Dreamcast for the fishing game Get Bass. These control methods are usually too expensive, just plain pants or don't have enough software support, and that's why they remain novelty products.