Gaming has come a long way since the Magnavox Odyssey first arrived way back in 1972. But even then, people wanted their consoles to do more than just play games with the provided controller, which is why the Odyssey also has the first peripheral: a light gun. While light guns went on to become a popular and for a time, ubiquitous pack-in accessory, people have never stopped the quest to find ways to interact with televisions beyond just a vanilla controller.
Below are 9 of the strangest gaming peripherals to ever see the light of day. Some of them genuinely added to the gaming experience. Some of them didn't. Some of them barely make any sense at all.
Fans of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series were probably fans because the game allowed anyone to perform the sort of vertical and street-style tricks professional skateboarding is known for. Why, then, Activision decided to get rid of all the fun of a controller-based skateboarding game and replace it with something that required players to have some semblance of balance may never be understood. It didn't help that the skate deck's accompanying video game was pretty dismal, as well.
Long before Kinect promised to make YOU the controller, Sega promised the same thing with its floor-based octagon controller. It seemed to be powered by pure magic, as the device was rolled out to be awkwardly demoed on morning talk television programs. In an era where most people were convinced that we'd be living in a Virtual Reality Otherworld by 1999, the Activator looked like the first step toward that glorious, cyber punk future. Instead, those who used it learned that it didn't actually synthesize your molecules and beam them into the TV, Willy-Wonka style, but instead worked by mapping the controller to the 8 sides of the octagon. Breaking the beam of light by moving an object through it sent a signal to the Genesis and the game acted accordingly. So moving and punching in a game meant remapping your brain's primary motor cortex, and honestly, no one has the patience for that.
Perhaps the funnest part of the Atari 2600 Foot Craz controller is the name itself. It sounds like a bootleg game controller from some unknown country behind the Iron Curtain. "Bro, come and buy Foot Craz from me, all the exercise, make strong like Micheal Jordan, yes?" Other than that, it's the grandaddy of every rolled up DDR mat in closets across the world.
The Foot Craz predated Nintendo's Power Pad by a few years, but offered all the fun of running in place that the early '80s could muster. It supported two games, which were pack-in titles: Video Jogger, and Video Reflex. Video Jogger was played by moving your feet on the pad, much like a primitive Stadium Events. The controller registered your feet hitting the switches and an on-screen circle made its way around an oval track, racing another circle. Too challenging? Don't worry, there was another, slower oval track for the saddest of gamers. Video Reflex was a proto DDR, with five colors appearing on the screen. A Noid-like creature would appear in one of the color blocks and the player stepped on the appropriate color on the Foot Craz to send the Noid to the grave. It worked exactly as well as you would expect a footpad controller for the Atari 2600 would work. The controller is now pretty rare and is desired by collectors and confused fetishists.
The Nintendo Power Glove may be the most iconic video game peripheral of all time. If you are of a certain age, it is nigh impossible to see a Power Glove and not comment that it's "so bad." Every kid in the world wanted one, as Nintendo mania had reached such a fevered pitch that kids would have accepted candy from strangers if the van were painted with a Super Mario Bros. 3 motif. But when "The Wizard" villain Lucas donned the futuristic device and struck fear into the hearts of our heroes by flawlessly controlling Rad Racer, the peripheral became the single most important technological breakthrough for children since the polio vaccine. Unfortunately, much like the Sega Activator, it didn't work nearly as well as advertised and many kids felt betrayed by the company they had grown to love.
What makes this entry stand out from the others on this list is that the Dreamcast fishing rod controller was actually kind of awesome. If you've never been fishing before, the Sega Bass Fishing series does a decent job at simulating the feel of fishing for lunker bass on a sunny summer's day. The best part is that the series does it with an arcadey-twist to turn the sport from an excuse to drink beer on a lake while you wait for something to happen, into a fast-paced, action-packed sport. The controller even had rudimentary motion controls, so it worked with Virtua Tennis 2K2 and Soulcaliber.
Unlike many game-specific controllers, the fishing rod worked awesomely. It really responded well and added a lot to the experience of the handful of Sega fishing games that were released for the Dreamcast. There are still fishing games being made and sold with controllers that are pole-based, but for many, the era of fishing pole controllers began and ended with Dreamcast.
Google Glass may be the smart, web-enabled head gear of the future, but Konami's Laser Scope controller blazed the trail for all dorky wearable tech for years to come. Essentially a voice activated light gun, users were first required to close all the curtains and lock the doors to their home before putting the controller on, lest they face savage beatings the next day in recess. The controller was very Borg like in appearance, but very few people were assimilated to its half-cocked ways. Marketed as a controller where "fire" was the secret word to make the controller fire at the onscreen target, not surprisingly this NES peripheral didn't work as advertised.
Given the primitive state of voice control technology at the time, the controller was unable to discern between the command "fire!" and literally every other ambient sound in the room where it was being used. The controller did have built-in headphones, but this may have been to work around the controller picking up sound from the television and bursting into flames as its processor overheated from an infinite input loop.
The uDraw GamingTablet is notable for being the peripheral that destroyed an entire company. OK, that may be a little hyperbolic, but the ill-fated tablet cost THQ $100 million USD. And as for THQ, they were sued as a direct result of the uDraw tablet's disastrous performance. After they smoothed things over, the company recovered and continued forward. No, wait, the opposite of that. They folded in January of 2013 and their assets and properties were liquidated. The THQ Humble Bundle raised over $5 million USD for the company, but they had previously defaulted on a $50 million USD loan, and a few days after the Bundle closed, the company declared bankruptcy. The tablet enjoyed some success on Wii, but it seemed customers had little interest in doodling on an $80 controller on their Xbox 360 and PS3.
Nintendo has a rich history of health-based peripherals, and this Japan-only controller accessory helped ease the symptoms of Nintendo Thumb. Nintendo Thumb is a burning, blistering condition that affects the thumbs primarily of people without enough gaming experience to have worked up a nice callous. Basically a small rubber disc, the device fit over the Famicom D-pad and provided a softer, squishier way to control your favorite games, games like... Elevator Action and Space Invaders? Well, those were some of the stickers provided to Japanese gamers who bought the things. Gamers have tried all sorts of things since the FamiCoin to ease the mild discomfort that comes with gaming, from controller skins to post-apocalyptic fingerless gloves. The successor of the FamiCoin, various incarnations of rubber controller nubs, are still being made for modern systems by third parties.
We live in an era where we can fit incredibly powerful computer systems into our pockets, but we still haven't cracked the virtual reality future the '90s promised. While this brave, Matrix-esque era has yet to come to fruition 20 years later, it certainly can't be blamed on a lack of anyone using the buzzword to sell anything with even a cursory resemblance to VR technology. Like the Activator, the Power Glove, and the Laser Scope, the Aura Interactor evoked ideas of a fantastic virtual world, while failing utterly to deliver on anything even remotely like what it presented itself to be. It was a vest, with speakers inside of it.
When something bass-intense happened on the screen, like an explosion or the landing of a fireball, the resultant sound would be felt by the wearer. If you weren't satisfied with how it felt, you could turn the volume on the vest up, presumably to extreme levels. Play it loud, indeed. Since it worked off the audio-out of whatever you plugged it into, it came with an amplifier that was powered by a wall outlet. This allowed players to look like dorks, while also having cords hanging off them.
Do you have any memories of the peripherals mentioned here, fond or otherwise? Which add-ons left you scratching your head? We want to hear about it. Join the conversation in the comments below.
Seth Macy is a freelance writer and podcaster. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy and MyIGN at sethgmacy.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét