D-pad

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The D-pad (cross shape on left) first came to prominence on the controller for the Famicom.
The D-pad (cross shape on left) first came to prominence on the controller for the Famicom.

A D-pad (short for directional pad) is a tetradirectional (4-direction) control found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads and game controllers, with one button on each point. Like early video game joysticks, the vast majority of D-pads are digital; in other words, only the directions provided on the D-pad buttons can be used, with no intermediate values. However, combinations of two directions (up and left, for example) do provide diagonals.

Although digital D-pads offer less nuance and flexibility than analog sticks, they can easily be manipulated (requiring little movement of the thumb) with very high accuracy. In recent years, D-pads have been developed which can measure different levels of pressure, giving a degree of analog control.

D-pads have appeared on other kinds of electronic equipment, including A/V remote controls (especially since the appearance of DVD players, which are heavily menu driven), calculators, PDAs and smartphones. In addition, full-sized computer keyboards often have cursor control keys arranged in a T or cross pattern for use as a D-pad; for older computer games, sometimes the I, J, K, and M keys (arranged in a cross shape on a QWERTY keyboard) serve the same function. Other examples of key arrangements are provided below.

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A precursor to the standard D-pad was used by the Intellivision console, which was released by Mattel Electronics in 1980. The Intellivision's unique controller featured the first alternative to a joystick on a home console, a circular pad that allowed for 16 directions of movement by pressing it with the thumb. A precursor to the D-pad also appeared on Entex's short lived "Select A Game" cartridge based handheld system; it featured non-connected raised left, right, up and down buttons aligned to the left of a row of action buttons. Similar directional buttons were also used on the Atari Game Brain, the unreleased precursor to the Atari 2600.

The first "connected" (pad) style D-pad appeared in 1981 on a handheld game system: "Cosmic Hunter" on Milton Bradley's Microvision. The pad was operated the same way today's D-pads are, using the thumb to manipulate the onscreen "hero" character in any of four directions.

In 1982, Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi updated this idea, shrinking it and altering the points into the familiar modern "cross" design for their Donkey Kong handheld game. The design proved to be popular for subsequent Game & Watch titles, although the previously introduced non-connected D-pad style was still utilized on various later Game & Watch titles, including the Super Mario Brothers handheld game. This particular design was patented.

In 1984, the Japanese company "Epoch" created a handheld game system called the "Epoch Game Pocket Computer". It featured a D-pad, but it was not popular for its time and soon faded.

Initially intended to be a compact controller for the Game & Watch handheld games alongside the prior non-connected style pad, Nintendo realized that Gunpei's updated design would also be appropriate for regular consoles, and Nintendo made the D-pad the standard directional control for the hugely successful Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System under the name "+Control Pad". All major video game consoles since have had a D-pad of some shape on their controllers. Arcade games, however, have largely continued using joysticks.

A recent trend in modern consoles, beginning with the Nintendo 64, has been to provide both a D-pad and a compact thumb-operated analog stick; depending on the game, one type of control may be more appropriate than the other. In many cases with games that use a thumbstick, the D-pad is used as a set of extra buttons, all four usually centered around a kind of task, such as giving commands to friendly non-player characters.

The actual term "D-pad" was coined by Sega. The company used the term when describing the controllers for the Genesis system in instruction manuals and other literature.

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