How does that magic appear on screen? In the shape of a triangle, circle and square, with what looks suspiciously like an X as well. In Super Mario World, an enemy called a Magikoopa, or Kamek (depending where you’re from), tries to attack you by firing some magic. The story of Sony and Nintendo’s conflict is something for another day, but an important thing to establish, as we explore why they adopted the shapes of triangle, circle, X and square. This created an obvious conflict between Sony and Nintendo and spurred Sony on to make their own console, the PlayStation, which would release in 1994. At the show the very next day, Nintendo announced their partnership with Philips to make a CD-ROM accessory. At the Consumer Electronics Shows in June 1991, Sony announced the collaboration to the world. Sony was working with them to make a CD-ROM accessory that would be compatible with the SNES, and began work on it all the way back in 1988 – two years before the SNES even existed. The time of the Super Nintendo was also the time of a collaboration between Nintendo and an electronics company you might have heard of – Sony. Two more buttons were added on the right, and two buttons were added to each shoulder at the top of the controller. Nintendo then introduced the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and evolved the gamepad again, in a way that still sees its influence to this very day.
The NES controller set a new standard for the games industry, and as new systems were introduced from competitors the D-Pad quickly became a mainstay, with the face buttons varying in letters and numbers. Something proven by a four-year-old me and my 60-year-old grandma on numerous occasions. It was easy for anyone to pick up and understand. A four-way directional pad on the left, two buttons on the right, and start and select buttons in the middle. The simple gamepad of the NES helped set it apart from the competition. The name of that home console? The Nintendo Entertainment System. They used inspiration from some of their Game and Watch digital toys for their control pad. After finding success in the arcade and digital toy side of gaming, with the likes of Donkey Kong and their Game and Watch handhelds, they decided to enter the home console market. To find this out, we have to jump back to 1983 and look at Nintendo.