allowed for varying levels of movement and near-360-degree control, translating into far more precise movements than were possible with a D-pad. For three generations, Nintendo's control stick was distinguished from analog sticks used in other major consoles by its surrounding octagonal area of freedom that only allowed it to be moved in any of eight different directions, with each one assigned to each of the octagon's eight vertices where the control stick could be pushed towards. Nintendo would eventually change this octagonal area to the circle widely used in other console controllers during the eighth generation starting with the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, to allow for many more different movement directions beyond these eight. On July 5, 1996, Sega released Nights into Dreams... for their Saturn console in Japan; bundled with it was the Saturn 3D control pad which featured an analog pad intended to give the player more fluid control over that game's flight-based gameplay. The analog pad used magnet-based Hall effect sensors, which was a unique implementation of the technology that was carried forward into the design of the Dreamcast controller as well. The Saturn's analog controller was previously mentioned in the June 1996 issue of Computer and Video Games magazine. On April 25, 1997, Sony introduced the world's first dual stick controller for its game console, PlayStation. Based on the same potentiometer technology that was used in the larger Dual Analog Flightstick, the Sony Dual Analog Controller featured rumble (removed in overseas versions), three modes of analog (Flightstick, Full Analog and Analog-Off), and dual plastic concave thumbsticks. It also added two new buttons, L3 and R3, under the thumbsticks, which could be used by pressing down on the sticks. On November 20, 1997, Sony released their third analog controller to the market: the DualShock. The controller featured similar twin analog sticks to the Dual Analog, although they featured convex rubber tips rather than concave plastic ones. It also removed the third analog (Flightstick) mode and added two rumble motors. In 1999, Sony's Ape Escape became the first video game in history to require the use of two analog sticks. In the console generations that followed, many video game console controllers have included two analog sticks, with the exception of the Sega Dreamcast controller and Nintendo's Wii Remote controller. Other exceptions to this dual-stick rule are Sony's PlayStation Portable and Nintendo's 3DS handheld game consoles aside from