Today's Top 10 focuses on some of the brilliantly terrible game controllers that shipped for game systems. Many of these were first-party, out-of-the-box concepts, while others were cash-in ideas from engineers that clearly either didn't have a sense in their noggin, or they simply listened too much to their marketing department. Either way, these controllers are a bad bunch.
| 10. 5200 Controller | |
| Though Nintendo didn't truly innovate with analog control out of the box, at least the company got it right. Atari's attempt two decades prior was just unbelievably half-assed - the company created an analog joystick that didn't even center itself when released, and its engineers used material for its buttons that seemed to deteriorate at room temperature. The games were challenging, but not in a good sense...with this thing, trying to get Pitfall Harry to jump over a gap was just as difficult as trying to stop him from running to the right. | |
| 9. Turbo Touch 360 | |
| Dear Control Engineers: Please don't remove the D-pad on a controller in favor of a touch-sensitive surface. You may try to con fighting gamers into thinking it'll make smooth circular motions easier, but you may not realize they like to rest their thumb on the pad when idle. Thanks. Your Pal, Craig | |
| 8. U-Force | |
| What looks like a laptop when folded and a Death Star access panel when open is one of the most ridiculous third-party controllers ever conceived. Infra-red beams shot out of this unit's surface and tried to interpret hand motions as controller movements, but did it work? Know anyone who owned this thing? There you go. | |
| 7. Power Glove | |
| One of the stupidest controllers is also considered one of the most classic simply due to brilliant marketing known as "product placement." The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, was a 90 minute Nintendo commercial for Mattel's Power Glove and Super Mario Bros. 3, even so far as using both items in the movie trailer. So even if you didn't pay your six bucks for a movie ticket, you were still assaulted with the branding. Oh, and you won't look as cool as this kid when you strap it on, so don't bother. | |
| 6. TI-99 Joystick | |
| Computers in the 80s weren't meant for the gaming market, but let's be realistic: that's all we really used these things for anyway. Texas Instruments' TI-99, a computer with an optional disk drive twice as massive, jumped on the gaming market early with a bunch of classic games like…um…M*A*S*H…and, um…some Pac-Man clone… Anyway, you had the choice of controlling these games with either A) the keyboard, or B) one of the crappiest, most unresponsive, piece of junk joysticks ever produced. But hey, there were two of them! | |
| 5. Philips CDi Game Controller | |
| Philips certainly had its heart in the right idea. It just didn't have the brains. The Philips CD-I was a near dead-on-arrival, straight-to-infomercial multimedia system with a huge focus on games. But with a really retarded set of remote controller designs, from the sluggish and wildly inaccurate analog unit shown here to a digital pad that looks more like a crackpipe than a controller, these guys really knew how to woo the gaming public. But at least the system had Zelda! | |
| 4. Intellivision Disk | |
| Look, we understand that many system designers were shooting in the dark during the early days of videogames. I'm sure that a handheld controller that looked like a touch-tone phone appeared "Space Age Technology," and the design even preceded the Nintendo D-pad by more than a half-decade…even offering more directional points than an 8-way controller could dream of having. But good luck figuring out if you're pressing left or just slight up and left. And controller overlays? Work of the devil. | |
| 3. Sega Activator | |
| Didn't the U-Force teach us that invisible infra-red beams are the absolute worst way of controlling your games? This octagon from Sega promised players who stood in the middle a new way of fighting in titles like Eternal Champion. But it just ended up making 8 year olds look like they were having convulsions. | |
| 2. Xbox Fat | |
| I may be able to palm a bowling ball, but even I couldn't comfortably or effectively wrap my mitts around Microsoft's original monstrosity. This gargantuan thing was clearly made for the Rock Biter from The Neverending Story. What a shame the Nothing took him away. | |
| 1. Jaguar Controller | |
| Maybe Atari was doomed even before the Jaguar was ever conceived, but their idea of a controller definitely didn't help. Not only did the company bring back the unnecessary phone keypad-with-overlays theme of the early 80s, Atari also created a three action button device in a world of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, a genre that the company was trying to woo over to its 64-bit system. On top of this, the company utilized a VGA plug for its controller ports, and the controller plugs simply fell out if a mouse farted somewhere in the house. | |
| Honorable Mention: Spider-Man Plug 'n Play | |
| Look at it. Just look at it. | |