Steam now has support for Nintendo Online classic controllers

Last year, Nintendo announced an N64 controller for use with the Nintendo Switch, and I announced my intention to use it on PC. Narrator’s voice: he didn’t.

I’ve less of an excuse not to do it now however, because a Steam client update released yesterday added Steam Input support for “Nintendo Online classic controllers.”

Steam Input is Valve’s platform for enabling players to use more or less any controller with more or less any game. It lets you do things like map the PlayStation controller’s trackpad click to a button in a game designed for an Xbox controller, or even map the Switch’s gyro motion controllers to mouse movement.

Now it lets you do the same for the Nintendo Online classic controllers, which includes Nintendo’s modern re-releases of controllers for the NES, SNES, N64 and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. All four of these were originally released for use with their respective platform’s collection of games available via Nintendo Switch’s online subscription service. I might have previously been able to get the N64 controller working with PC games, but now it’ll be easier to, say, map the N64 pad’s C-buttons to one of the two analogue sticks a modern game demands.

I am unironic fan of the N64 controller, both for its groundbreaking implementation of an analogue stick and because it was more comfortable to hold than any gamepad I’d used aged 12. You can’t tell me that obvious GoldenEye homage Agent 64: Spies Never Die wouldn’t feel better when played with a real N64 pad.

The same Steam update also added support for other niche controllers, the Qanba Obsidian, Qanba Dragon Arcade, and HORI Fighting Stick mini 4, all of which are fight sticks. You can read details of a handful of other bug fixes in the patch notes on Steam.

Nintendo’s new N64 controllers were released last year, and you can watch the Nintendo Direct that announced them below: