Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Look at your thumb the next time you pick up literally any modern controller, because the cross shaped pad under it traces straight back to a little orange clamshell like this one. The Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong, released in 1982, is where the D-pad as we know it actually debuted, years before it ever touched a home console.
Nintendo needed a way to shrink an arcade joystick down into something that would fit inside a pocket sized handheld, and the engineering credit for solving it belongs specifically to Ichiro Shirai, working under Gunpei Yokoi's Research and Development team. It worked so well that Nintendo later made it standard on the Famicom and NES under the name Plus Control Pad, and the design earned an actual Technology and Engineering Emmy Award in 2007. That two screen clamshell shape sitting in your hand also became the direct template for the Nintendo DS and 3DS decades later.
This wasn't some niche release either. Game & Watch as a whole ran from 1980 to 1991, sold 43.4 million units across sixty different titles, and the Donkey Kong unit that introduced the D-pad moved 8 million of those on its own. Toys R Us carrying it on store shelves, exactly like you see here, is part of why a four inch piece of plastic with a tiny LCD screen ended up reshaping how every controller on earth would be built.
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Look at your thumb the next time you pick up literally any modern controller, because the cross shaped pad under it traces straight back to a little orange clamshell like this one. The Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong, released in 1982, is where the D-pad as we know it actually debuted, years before it ever touched a home console.
Nintendo needed a way to shrink an arcade joystick down into something that would fit inside a pocket sized handheld, and the engineering credit for solving it belongs specifically to Ichiro Shirai, working under Gunpei Yokoi's Research and Development team. It worked so well that Nintendo later made it standard on the Famicom and NES under the name Plus Control Pad, and the design earned an actual Technology and Engineering Emmy Award in 2007. That two screen clamshell shape sitting in your hand also became the direct template for the Nintendo DS and 3DS decades later.
This wasn't some niche release either. Game & Watch as a whole ran from 1980 to 1991, sold 43.4 million units across sixty different titles, and the Donkey Kong unit that introduced the D-pad moved 8 million of those on its own. Toys R Us carrying it on store shelves, exactly like you see here, is part of why a four inch piece of plastic with a tiny LCD screen ended up reshaping how every controller on earth would be built.
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#gameandwatch #donkeykong #dpad #nintendo #gunpeiyokoi #toysrus #retrogaming #handheldgaming #nintendohistory #retrotech #vintagegaming #retrogames #1982 #classicgaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
