As the lone conduit between our brain-tanks and our consoles (or computers), controllers need to be able to do a lot of different things for a lot of different games, and do them all well enough that they’re effectively invisible. The best designs do just that. Great controllers from our childhood are recalled with the same fondness as a first kiss, or a favourite pair of slippers. Conversely, while it was certainly ground-breaking, we remember the 'analogue' stick on the N64 controller like that time we had pneumonia.
So, to celebrate the shocking announcement that the DualShock 4 will look much the same as the last three, we’ve delved into the archives to bring you nine of the weirdest and wackiest controllers in gaming history. Some are genuinely innovative, and hold ideas that would be well worth revisiting, and others should probably have been left on the shelf. (Hell, two of them could actually be used for shelves, in a pinch.)
Here we go, in no particular order:
We'll start with a good one, and it's meant to be pronounced neh-gee-con, for the pedants out there. Everyone else, continue as you were.
While it may look like a standard third-party plastic-fantastic PlayStation controller you'd find in a bargain bin, it's worth bearing in mind that this thing dropped before Sony's own Dual Analog existed, providing that glorious analogue smoothness that we now find indispensable (particularly in racing games) before Sony had gotten its act together and released an official analogue pad.
The neGcon differed in that instead of analogue sticks, the entire controller could twist around that central pivoty-bit (try to stay with us here, it could get technical), providing a surprisingly intuitive control-feel that was perfectly suited to driving games.
Sadly, it didn’t perform commercially, no doubt in part because it was a little too strange for mainstream acceptance. Just goes to show where genuine innovation will get you.
Back in the early PlayStation days this was bad-ass. No, really.
By all accounts, Phantasy Star Online was a very good game. One of its more forward-thinking aspects was the ability to communicate with your fellow players (regardless of whether they spoke your language or not) through two experimental systems – Word Select and Symbol Chat.
Both of the systems were quite clever; Word Select had you select words or phrases from an available pool, and they were then translated into the language of the person at the other end. Symbol Chat used pictograms in what we can only assume felt like a game of multi-lingual Pictionary, which actually sounds pretty awful and frustrating, now that it comes to it. Trying to express “I’m gonna prawn u so hard” or “NO DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR YET” using pictograms would have been hard, which is why there was also the option to use a keyboard.
Which – we guess – is the only reason for Sammy's disasterpiece keyboard thing. Although we do have to admire the company’s chutzpah. “Make it smaller? Hell no. What's the point in that? We should add some more keys. You can never have too many keys.”
To scale.
Steel Battalion was also a good game. Tooling around in colossal mechs is a pretty righteous way to spend your time, but Steel Battalion took immersion to the next level by shipping with a controller that put you right in the mech-driver's seat. With other games, you see the cool looking racks of buttons and switches and fancy-pants joysticks in your cockpit, but you're really just sitting on the couch with your lame twin analogue sticks and a paltry dozen buttons.
With this puppy, you could set yourself up in a small foil-lined room, throw on your orange onesie and bike helmet, and believe. Right up until you failed to eject from your mech before it blew up and lost your save-game forever, of course. But seriously, look at it. Imagine playing Forza with it. Imaging playing anything with it. With that many buttons and toggles, fun is not optional.
Once you've got a rig like this you won't even have time to play. You'll be too busy fighting off chicks.
Many of the controllers on this list are examples of what happens when good ideas go bad. The LaserScope is a true classic of the genre. You have the original idea – a head-wearable-peripheral that you can use to interact with your NES. This is a good idea. Around this kernel of wisdom, various unspeakable accretions then somehow form and build upon one other until you have a sort of turd-pearl that completely obscures that once-noble intention.
The LaserScope's pearl was formed largely through that kind of inexplicable breathtaking foolishness that sometimes afflicts companies. Looking at the finished product, you have to ask “Why didn't anyone notice how bad this was?”
It was essentially a head-mounted light gun that you aimed by looking (presumably inducing neck injuries in excitable players), then fired by saying “fire”. Except you could also fire by saying “vase” or “plum brandy.” Or by breathing too loudly. Or shutting a door across the room. Pretty much any noise set it off. So it sucked.
Although it did make you look like a bad-ass, and for that we think headwear peripherals deserve another chance. Just so long as Konami isn't involved.
That advice seems rather flawed. Mine would be "take the headset off and run".
Another one... just because. (Oh, and nice work upholding that Seal of Quality, Nintendo.)
We feel like Midway missed a trick here. There was a chance to have a Konami-Kreated-Kontroller, and it didn't happen. (Although that would have created quite an uncomfortable acronym.) Instead, Innovation had a go, and it actually did a tolerable job of it.
The premise was that you bought Mortal Kombat II or III on Mega Drive/Genesis, and if you sucked enough to be unable to do a character's harder moves or combos, you also bought a Kontrol Pad, which came bundled with a few cartridges – sorry, kartridges - that you could plug in to the back of the, erm, kontroller. You could then use the four shoulder buttons to instantly do ultra-facekicking moves with the greatest of ease.
While this does seem a bit cheesy, and also a bit of a rip-off (the controllers only came with three different cartridges each, so you either had to deal with only having your cheatboxes for a few characters, or buy a boatload of controllers), the idea itself is another cool one.
This was the only way to make this controller interesting. Why he'd need it is a separate issue.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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