If you played video games in the nineties, you probably remember that silly frustration of trying to play Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat on the classic Sega Genesis. The original controller only had three action buttons. To do a hard kick or switch your attacks, you had to press the Start button in the middle of the fight. It was a horrible mental gymnastics that completely broke the rhythm of the game. Then Sega released the six-button version. At first, it just seemed like a way to get us to spend more money on an accessory, but the truth is that this controller changed a lot of how developers thought about games from then on. It wasn't just a matter of making fighting games easier, though having the X, Y, and Z buttons perfectly aligned saved the lives of anyone who loved Street Fighter. The main point is that programmers gained the space to map functions without having to resort to pause menus. In Comix Zone, for example, you could use your inventory items instantly with a single click. You didn't need to stop the action, open a grey screen, and choose the item. The game just kept flowing. The same thing happened with Ranger X, which is a fantastic game but quite complex to control. With the extra buttons, you could move the character and the support motorcycle almost independently without the gameplay turning into a mess. Another subtle physical change that made a big difference was the d-pad itself. The D-pad on the six-button controller felt much softer and a bit looser. At least in my experience, trying to pull off a fireball motion on the original three-button controller was a one-way street to blistered thumbs. The new directional pad made the movements feel much more organic. I find it funny how we usually think of game design as just programming or visual art, but in the end, a simple piece of plastic with three extra buttons completely changed the rhythm of what was produced for the console. So much so that nowadays, it's actually hard to try playing some of the Genesis classics using the old controller. We get spoiled way too quickly.