The Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers (along with the elite variant of the latter) are widely hailed as the best controllers in the world. They’re great, but you know what else always winds up in a discussion about the “best” current-gen controllers? The Wii U Pro Controller. The Pro Controller is one of the most comfortable and solidly-built controllers available, and Nintendo has a history of building wonderful controllers. There’s a reason pro Smash players still lug around their 15-year-old Game Cube controllers to tournaments, and there’s a reason USB SNES controllers like that SNES30 (pictured above) are so popular for emulation.
When it comes to running classic Nintendo games on our smartphones, or newer ones, there may be an official alternative in the future. During the recent shareholders meeting, Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi had the following to say (via NintendoLife ): “Physical controllers for smart device applications are available in the market and it is possible that we may also develop something new by ourselves. On the other hand, I believe Nintendo’s way of thinking it to look at whether action games are really not impossible (without a physical controller) to create and how we can make… such a game.” It’s easy to imagine how Nintendo would pull off an Animal Crossing or Fire Emblem game on mobile using touch controls, but it sure would be nice to have options. Hopefully this is an idea that Nintendo pursues. Maybe, if nothing else, Nintendo will release some drivers that make the Pro Controller compatible with its smartphone games (a boy can dream).