Revisiting Super Mario 64 DS made me realise how fundamentally flawed its controls are. I mean if you want to look at a game that has issues in its design directly in the core of its existence, this is the game. Super Mario 64 was Nintendo's demonstration of the N64 and by extension its new controller, and by extra extension of the analogue joystick controls. The movement is one of the most defining factors that made Super Mario 64 so fantastic, perhaps the camera controls have aged, but the movement itself is pretty timeless. So fast forward to the Nintendo DS, Nintendo now want to make a launch title to demonstrate the capabilities of this console, and in order to demonstrate its graphical capabilities why not take a beloved N64 game and improve it and show it running on a HANDHELD, pretty impressive, and yes, Super Mario 64 DS looks pretty fantastic for a DS game, in fact, I dare say it is one of the very best looking DS games from a technical standpoint, which is impressive for a launch title. Now that's all well and good but what about those innovative analogue controls? What? Analog controls? No, no, the DS has a D-pad you see, so now rather than smooth movement we have a grid-based movement system and a run button. It's total crap and feels awful, you lack all precision and constantly overshoot every movement, jumping through a simple platforming segment becomes a gauntlet as you fight with the controls to get into position. Even if you play the game on 3DS with a circle pad, it's not simply the inputs the entire game is designed with 8 directional movements, which is odd since you can also control the game with the touch screen, not sure why you ever would but still, which could have had 360 movements and if that existed then playing the game on later hardware would mitigate the issues, but no, that's 8 direction based too. The camera isn't even improved, if anything it's worse, only being able to place it behind you, or move it by using the touch screen. Just a total balls up completely, and was doomed from the start due to the game's reliance on the analogue stick and its absence on the DS.