Those raised on the Playstation might immediate react at what at first glance is a chunky Dual Shock ripoff. Those who have deeper roots might be a little amused at the younger gamers.
At last, control pads have come full circle.
The Playstation pad was a direct decendant from the NES Max's ergonomic shape and the SNES layout. It added two more shoulder buttons, that aside it was pretty much a SNES pad.
With the N64, Nintendo began deviating from the SNES design, adding in an analog stick, and a modified button layout. Sony later introduced the original PS1 analog pad.
With the PS2 Sony made analog and rumble standard. The Gamecube's pad was an... odd... sight to behold. The button layout was quite different, the stick layouts were interesting, and man was it small.
With the PS3, Sony took one step forward (tilt) and one step back (lack of rumble) for Sixaxis. Thankfully, their lawsuit with Immersion settled, so now the Dual Shock 3, aka "the pad the PS3 should've had from the get-go" is now available. Nintendo's Wiimote is quite far removed from anything brought out previously, unless you used it as a glorified NES pad. They also released a ****c controller that looked like a SNES pad with analogs and an addition set of shoulder buttons.
And now this. The Wii ****c Pro and the Dual Shock share a common ancestor. While the Playstation pads never strayed far from the source, their Nintendo counterparts have changed quite a bit over the years. And now? Except for tilt support (will it rumble?), the two pads are now, obviously, related.
/history lesson
Hopefully there'll be more games that utilize the ****c/****c Pro. I'd like to get my hands on this to try it out, that's for sure. Its interesting to look back at how Nintendo basically established the basis of the modern pad, went away from it, and has now finally come back. Sony carried the SNES/NES Max lineage on, while Sega's analog pad for the Saturn helped inspire the pad for the Dreamcast, Xbox, arguably the Gamecube and of course, the 360. And of course, the new Street Fighter pads are going back to the Sega 6-button design on top of that.
Very cool :)