10 Great (And Terrible) Gaming Accessories From A Bygone Era
There have been some excellent and some rather shoddy gaming accessories over the years. Sometimes they’re introduced as a gimmick to boost sales, but other times they are legitimate gamechangers (pun intended.)
Here, in no particular order, we check out some of the best and worst accessories ever delivered to the greedy fingers of gamers like us.
1. NES Zapper
Since 1988 with Sega’s mechanical arcade submarine shooter Periscope, light guns were the new inventively interactive ways for players to engage with games. The unique models and intuitive design made for an infinitely compelling experience, from arcade shooters into the twilight of tube TVs. With the desire to bring light gun shooters into homes, Nintendo brought a version of their own mechanical arcade game into homes with Duck Hunt Kosenju in 1976. The game served as a blueprint for the future release of the NES Zapper in 1984.
The time between Duck Hunt Kosenju and the release of the NES Zapper was host to numerous other home light gun games from the likes of Colico, Magnavox, and Atari, but none made an impact like Nintendo. The Zapper’s success could be attributed to a couple factors: it was an accessory to the wildly popular Nintendo Entertainment System and it was complimented by a variety of engaging titles.
An improved NES version of Duck Hunt along with games like Operation Wolf and Freedom Force is just a short list of software that kids the world over would be thrilled to play in their own living rooms. The accessory could be found in millions of homes around the world and deserves recognition for being a staple in the childhoods countless gamers.
2. Power Glove
Bringing real-life firearm-inspired forms into the gaming space was one-upped by the idea behind Nintendo’s futuristic Power Glove. Its glove and button design encouraged the imaginations of all the possible implementations for interacting with NES favorites. The accessory’s hype was so inflated that it even earned itself a plot point in 1989’s The Wizard, wherein the Power Glove is utilized by Lucas Barton, played by Jackey Vinson, to show off his gaming skills in Rad Racer.
Despite there being only two games designed specifically for this unique controller, It was seen as a must buy for gamers and parents. Thousands of kids opened up their gifts on the Christmas of 1989 with gleeful delight that turned into regretful dissatisfaction after using it for a couple hours.
At the end of the day, the Power Glove was impressive as an accessory to the NES but it didn’t change the gaming industry like Nintendo may have hoped. The number pad “controller hacking” abilities and motion controls certainly drew the attention of consumers, but those same features turned out to be underwhelming when actually implemented in-game.
Nintendo isn’t one to let a failure stay a failure and similarly to the Zapper, the technology behind the motion controls would be refined and get picked up again for Nintendo’s future endeavors.
3. R.O.B.
A mostly forgotten relic of early Nintendo, R.O.B. or Robot Operating Buddy would fit well beside the Power Glove as both were technologically ambitious and neither really got the job done. R.O.B. was a bit more out there in terms of the role it was supposed to fill however. The robot was described as a Trojan horse of console marketing, and millions of parents bought the NES because their children wanted their very own robot. Of course as the epic story goes, the Trojan horse is accepted into the castle, but instead of dozens of menacing Trojans the figurative horse was filled with nothing more than Japanese electronics, plastic, and dead dreams.
R.O.B. could technically directly interact with games using the same light technology as the Zapper and a second controller. The problem being that the robot had unexpectedly limited input ability. For example, in the game Gyromite, R.O.B. would effectively only be capable of pressing or holding the A or B button (something that would easily be done on one controller). Even worse, the second game playable with R.O.B., Stack-Up, was much less a video game than it was a platform where the player controls R.O.B. to complete a series of puzzles. This task could be done entirely without the NES console and television.
Nevertheless, The NES (and R.O.B.) sold like hotcakes and kids had little time to complain about their battery-draining robot buddy because they were too busy playing Super Mario Bros, The Legend Of Zelda, and Metroid. R.O.B.’s unceremonious erasure from the market was a bad day for people excited to have such a futuristic toy in their homes. The NES did perfectly fine without the robotic toy front and center and R.O.B. is fondly looked back on as a mascot of the early Nintendo console.
4.Game Boy Camera
A bit later in the future Nintendo made their return in the portable console space with 1989’s Game Boy and nine years later with the Game Boy Color. The consoles had an overwhelming amount of 1st party and 3rd party peripherals like mounted lights and speakers. The Game Boy Camera was a little bit different since it was actually an innovative way of merging the real world with video games.
The GB Camera hardware is simply a Game Boy game cartridge with a small digital camera attached to the top. In fact, the Game Boy Camera was among the first portable digital cameras at the time, and was considered a neat little advancement of technology.
The software that was onboard the cartridge is bare bones by our standards but was a sandbox of fun for any Game Boy owners. Even though the camera was only capable of capturing 4 shades of black and white, the application was intuitive enough to make taking ancient selfies fun. In addition to the camera mode, there was also a pre-loaded image editor on the cartridge, which allowed users to add stickers to, draw on, and morph saved images.
Furthermore, there was a suite of mini-games that would use the user’s pictures as assets in their design. For example in Space Fever II, a super simplified version of Space Fever, the user’s photographs show up as the final boss. Or in DJ where the user’s image would be the head of a DJ character performing a song produced in the simplistic DJ music application.
In the long term the GB Camera wasn’t the kind of product that every kid had under the Christmas tree despite having a positive reception. Selling the $50 product was a bit more difficult than Nintendo had expected. But the accessory is remembered fondly as innovative and an interesting look at the intuitiveness brought on by technological limitations. Nintendo was not finished with their camera gadgets however, and the more recent Nintendo DSI and DSI XL both implemented cameras into their design.
5. Sega CD
Finally, something that isn’t made by Nintendo! The Genesis’ performance enhancing add-on introduced modular upgrades to Japanese consumers in late 1991. This literal hardware upgrade added more RAM, upgraded graphics and sound cards, a better CPU, and finally the ability to read CD’s. The main draw of a CD drive would prove to be an asset in the marketing cycle up to the release of the upgrade.
Sold as “cutting edge tech”, consumers the world over were excited for the prospect of 3D games and shorter load times. Japan was the first to receive the Mega-CD, as it is known in the eastern market, with a somewhat disappointing launch. Though the hype was not dead in North America, where the console release a year later and sold out because of stunted supply and overwhelming demand. It was evident that consumers were open to spending hundreds of dollars on modular upgrades so long as games fully utilized the upgraded hardware. Unfortunately for consumers and SEGA, the SEGA CD was sorely limited on software.
While the Genesis was host to over 870 games, the Sega-CD had only about 200 games at the end of its life span. This led to consumer dissatisfaction despite fan favorites like Sonic 3D and Eternal Champions 3D on the platform. Considering the $299 price point, it was fair for gamers to expect a video game line up worthy of a brand new console.
The failure of this add on could be cited as the reason consoles have avoided major optional hardware upgrades to this day. Instead the big manufactures opted to release whole new consoles with slight upgrades. The PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X at the end of the 8th console generation are good examples. Now in the 9th generation, Microsoft decided to release both a flagship and lower powered console side by side, only for Sony to release their PS5 Pro late in 2024. Considering the unenthusiastic reception that the PS5 Pro is getting however, it may be time to abandon the idea of half upgrades altogether.
6. Game Genie
The Game Genie and similar devices like the GameShark, Code Breaker, and Action Replay were unofficial game cheating peripherals. Back in the day, kids with a Game Genie didn’t have any problems making friends.
These cheat devices used creative ways of discovering cheat codes and altering programming code to unlock video games like never before. Often times bundled with a booklet of cheat codes for the most popular games at the time, these devices made it so easy a kid could do it. Almost too easy.
Being the litigious party poopers that they are, Nintendo was first to bring the developers, Galoop and Codemasters, to court. Meanwhile SEGA released an official Game Genie in partnership with Galoop for the Genesis. After all was said and done, the judge ruled in favor of the cheaters and compared the use of such devices to “Skipping pages in a book or hitting fast forward in a movie.”
This was great news for the cheating industry and these peripherals would live into the 7th (best) generation of console gaming. There, the ability to edit the games code allowed skilled users to find files that weren’t meant to be seen on the consumer side. This would grant gamers the opportunity to see behind the curtains and get a deeper understanding and appreciation of how games are made. Though this era of cheating wouldn’t last in the console space.
The abilities that these peripherals granted can be compared to considered early modding, which has reached mainstream popularity for PC gamers in the modern day. Unfortunately for console gamers, we’re at a time with online multiplayer, hotfix patches, and microtransactions, and developers don’t have the need nor the desire for cheat codes anymore, at least not without trying to nickel and dime their consumers first.
7. DK Bongos
The DK Bongos are a peripheral based on Bongo drum instruments developed for the GameCube’s Donkey Konga. A musical rhythm based affair, the DK Bongos would detect taps to the individual bongos as well as claps picked up by the on board microphone.
Initially only usable with Donkey Konga, the peripheral became a surprise hit for Nintendo and encouraged the creation of two sequels for Donkey Konga and a spin-off called Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, all on the GameCube platform. The latter being an example of utilizing the bongos as more of a controller than the instrument that inspired its design. This would prove to be inspirational into the modern day but first came more games with support for the DK Bongos.
The Nintendo Switch’s 2018 game Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! was fully playable with the DK Bongos with the correct adapter. Plus, third party indie games like Beat Nebula, Squatbot, and Bull Beat were able to utilize the bongos. These games were more inspired by DK Jungle Beat than the Donkey Konga games that birthed the peripheral in the first place. It would seem to be that the unique uses of the DK Bongos as a controller is what kept gamers drumming away on them.
For the uninitiated, the speed running community is a group of gamers whose main goal is getting every cent out of any game imaginable. But seriously, what they actually do is play a game as quickly as possible all the while adhering to specific rules or challenges. It has been a massively popular and competitive space in the gaming community for decades.
One sub-genre of speedrun is the “DK Bongo run”. Simply put, the speedrunner figures out ways to hook up the DK Bongos to any game imaginable and tries to complete the game as fast as possible. These runs can vary from completing classics like Super Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64 to immensely difficult runs like completing Dark Souls or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice while using a pair of bongos.
Because of its initial popularity and long lasting use, it should not be a surprise to anyone if the bongo peripheral continues to live on well past the time of the GameCube and Donkey Konga.
8. Gibson SG Guitar Controller
Another peripheral that has lasted to our day, the Gibson SG controller and Guitar Hero were also surprise hits and took over the world back in 2005. GH was another rhythm based musical game but instead of the jungle music from Donkey Konga this game’s track list was made entirely out of popular licensed rock music. Developed with the unique controller in mind, Guitar Hero made gamers feel like they were rockstars and would result in a massive franchise and even a short lived sub-genre of games.
The main selling point of GH was the white guitar shaped controller. With 6 buttons on the neck, a wide strum bar on the bodies face, and a properly placed whammy bar, it resembled an actual guitar. This controller style changed very little in the 14 or so games that followed the original, with the exception of adding fret buttons to the neck or changing the order and placement of said buttons in the final installment, 2015’s Guitar Hero Live. At the end of the day this design is impeccable and was pretty much copied by their main competitor Rock Band by Harmonix.
Despite the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises being officially dead, the millions of gamers who were captivated by the controller design and the concept of being a guitar wizard still keep their plastic Gibson SGs handy. The third party game Clone Hero has been filling the rock shaped void since 2017. And more recently, Epic’s Fortnite Festival which follows the same formula as the games before it except its on the Fortnite platform.
Tuning onto Twitch it is possible to find dozens of streams with the Gibson SG front and center. Much like the DK Bongos, this peripheral is set to long outlive its progenitor into the future of gaming.
9. Memory cards
A true relic of simpler times. Many kids remember not having a memory card and leaving their console on overnight so as to not lose progress in their games. The memory card was at one point at the cutting edge of gaming tech. Leaving cartridge memory and stage passwords in the past, the memory cards were capable of saving dozens of files in one place while being portable at the same time.
The flash memory drive was first produced and distributed by Toshiba in 1987. Video game companies saw the new technology and began to think up ways to implement it on their own gaming products. SNK’s 1990 console, the NeoGeo AES, was the first to utilize the portable memory card. With only 2KiB of storage it was sufficient for storing save files and even allowed the migration of a user’s save to Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinets and vice versa.
During the era of CD and DVD gaming the memory card was used to across the console market as a solution to the read-only optical drives in consoles. Looking back, the proprietary memory card market comes off as consumer unfriendly since often time these cards weren’t compatible between console brands or even console generations. Whereas today any FAT32 formatted hard drives can be used across multiple generation and between brands.
Modern gaming has given gamers cloud saves and lightning fast solid state drives, but kids didn’t really think about that kind of thing at the time. Instead, they were excited to pop their memory card in a game box and be on their merry way to a friend’s house to show off their 100% completed save or awesome cast of created characters.
10. Super Gameboy
The Super Game Boy seems to be the perfect peripheral, with a simple design, easy implementation, and almost flawless execution. The Super Game Boy is simply an SNES cartridge that had a slot for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on the top of it. This peripheral allowed users to play their portable games on their television through SNES console. It even added color and additional effects to Game Boy games by using the Super Nintendo hardware, so they weren’t just large mirrors of the portable games but an actual improvement on them, too.
Contra: The Alien Wars, Killer Instinct, and Kirby’s Dream Land 2 is a short list of the dozens of games that had enhancements via the Super Game Boy. At the price of about $50, this was a must-have for any kid with both Super Nintendo and a Game Boy, even though technically you didn’t need a Game Boy when you had a SUPER GAME BOY!
More interestingly, the success and positive reception that this peripheral had could be considered one of the main inspirations behind Nintendo reviving Switch console. While it is also a massive upgrade on the design of the WiiU, the idea behind bringing a portable console from your pocket to the living room TV was made possible by the Super Game Boy more than 25 years before the launch of the Switch.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, earlier decades were host to an impressive amount of add-ons and peripherals for video game consoles. For better or worse there is certainly less plastic waste being churned out by these companies, as modern day peripherals have been limited to VR headsets, headphones, and portable systems. It is tough to say if there will be another surge like that of the Wii with its endless landfill of accessories, or if that trend is finally a thing of the past. Either way it is good to look back and reminisce about a time where video game companies had to be creative and inventive to get gamers to pull out their wallets instead of greedy and manipulative.
I for one am looking forward to a day where the R.O.B. II can wield a plastic Gibson SG and Zapper as we hunt ducks on the Switch 2.
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