The Nintendo Revolution console’s controller. It may be a better kept secret than the X360, but will it really revolutionize gaming? Do we need a drastically new controller?

The way I look at it, Sega and Konami have explored the twilight zone of gaming controllers for years longer than Nintendo has, throwing functionality out the window for the golden ideal of weird shitland. Nintendo has always had functional controllers, though some of us may have started to doubt them with their GCN controller. The triggers have a digital click as well as analogue movement, which has never proven itself as useful in my eyes. And using the GBA as a controller for a game on a second monitor turned many people off.

Now with the Nintendo DS, it’s a topic of debate whether the touch screen, second screen and microphone are indeed useful or a gimmick. With a lack of confidence in this department, it seems inevitable to me that Nintendo’s next controller will be a disappointment. I think developers will stick to making games that use the GCN’s controller (which should work with the REV unless they change something).

So with this thread, I thought it might be interesting to post pictures of some of the controllers you’ve seen that may be useful for one type of game, or a controller that time has forgot that could still be used today, perhaps with more functionality than today’s controllers. Or if you remember something weird enough to show others.




This is a favourite of mine. This board can be used to turn left of right, lean left or right on the edges, or push down on the nose or tail. You could do tricks with it, for example if you approach the lip of a ramp at an angle, then press down on the nose, you’d perform a grind. You could then put the board back into the default position to come out of the grind, or push down on the tail of the board to jump out of the grind, and for extra points you could do a kickflip by leaning right or left and resetting before you land. There were also many combination moves possible by inputting the right set of commands. I think this is an extremely well built and functional controller that can be used as long as skateboarding games exist, and it feels a hell of a lot more genuine than using a control pad to play Tony Hawk.




Capcom’s Steel Battalion controller was optimized for one game, though I guess you could play Virtua On with it, or some other Mech games. Rather than design this sort of controller for an arcade cabinet, Capcom expected people to buy these for their homes, and get addicted to networked games. Again this controller would give a far more authentic feel than the controllers we normally use, albeit an expensive option.




I stumbled upon this when looking for game controllers that use gyroscopes. This sucka has you sitting inside a gyro, so you can face in any direction. Strangely, this was exactly what I pictured Nintendo’s REV controller to look like, but I guess its been done. This was quite similar to the Afterburner II cabinet, except in that you would only rotate on a horizontal axis. The R360 was mostly found in Sega World amusement parks, and rarely in arcades. I think you could still use this for just about any flying or swimming game.






Above are just a few examples of virtual reality headsets, which I think will never eventuate into anything practical. The problem is that you need to keep looking at the reticle, and aim by moving your neck. I think we’re just too used to using our peripheral vision for this too work.

Well that should do for now, there’s many more I could list obviously. You guys post up some of your favourites/least favourites. I saw some weird shit at Sega World, but can any of you show me something I haven’t seen before?

My favourite: