This Smash Bros. Trophy Is From One Of The Earliest “Dual Stick” Shooters

The Wii U version of Super Smash Bros. features a trophy based on the 1979 arcade game Sheriff, director Masahiro Sakurai shared via Miiverse last night.

“In this game, the players aim by choosing one of eight directions to shoot using a second joystick separate from the one that controls movement,” Sakurai wrote. “It was quite a revolutionary game for its time.”

“For shooting games overseas, it’s common to see games that utilize the left stick to move around and the right to determine the direction to shoot, so we can say the origin of modern shooting games was this game—which is pretty remarkable.”

Sheriff was designed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda. If you’re curious, you can see the game’s arcade cabinet in action below. As you can see, it doesn’t quite use two “sticks,” as the second input is actually a dial or sorts. You can read about how the owner came across the cabinet here.