• the217
• Blogs
• Another Castle
• Peripherals on Parade: Part 2

• RSS

Peripherals on Parade: Part 2

posted by nikki at 9:39 pm.

• Bookmark & Share
• Comments (1)

The past, of course is fun to look back on, but you can find just as many interesting peripherals and controllers for more recent consoles.

Part 2: The Present (and not-so-very-distant past)

N64 Rumble Pak - Since the controllers for the N64 don’t have built-in force feedback, Nintendo started selling the Rumble Pak. I love me some rumble… but this thing just added to the already-bulky design of the N64 controller… and it had a slot for the N64’s bulky memory card, as well, which, when added, really made the whole mess look pretty ridiculous.

INTEC Game Screen - The Game Screen is a 5 inch screen that attaches to the top of your GameCube like a little mini-TV. I guess it’s meant to add portability to the GameCube, which seems a little silly to me. Frankly, why anyone in their right mind would want something like this is beyond me, but then again I have an unyielding hatred of tiny screens.

Eye Toy - This is a camera for your PS2. But not just a camera… oh no. It lets you interact with games by placing you image inside the game. Kind of like that show from the 90’s on Nickelodeon… Nick Arcade. Actually, this thing would have been really cool if they’d started selling it back then. Today, though, it’s a little too cheesy for my tastes. Of course, it’s not compatible with the PS3, so if you want to play with a camera on you shiny new console, you’ll have to fork out the cash for the PS3 Eye.

Gaming chairs - I guess this isn’t technically a peripheral… or a controller… but it makes me giggle. There are any number of these so-called “gaming chairs” on the market, all of them supposedly designed to incorporate themselves with the player’s console of choice in order to be the ultimate in comfort for gamers - some of them are even advertised to cater to specific genres. To be honest, I think most of them either look like some sort of torture device, or like something someone jacked from an airliner.

DDR Mats - Actually, I love these things. Oh, how I love them so… Thanks to them, I can Dance Dance to my heart’s content, without having to haul myself out to play on one of the commercial machines (and as I’m not so great at DDR, being able to play away from the public eye is definitly a good thing for all concerned, believe me). I guess someone finally found a use for the Power Pad technology. My only real qualm with them is that the inexpensive ones (i.e. the ones I bought because I’m cheap) have a tendency to slide on certain surfaces. Well, actually on just about every surface. I finally had to resort to velcroing them to my carpet.

Xbox 360 HD DVD Player - Since Microsoft couldn’t possibly give gamers the convinience of a built-in HD-DVD player in the XBox 360, they made them go out and buy this thing instead. Of course with HD-DVD having been dealt a final blow and surrendered to Blue-Ray… well, I guess you could always use your 360 HD-DVD Player as a really expensive doorstop…

The Wii Zapper - This thing looks like the incestuous lovechild of the Zapper and the Super Scope. Honestly, that’s all I have to say on this one.

The Wii Net Connect - The Net Connect is a third party creation that lets you connect your Wii to the internet via a standard ethernet cable rather than wireless… and I’m forced to ask - Why the heck couldn’t Nintendo just build this into the damn console in the first place? Would it really have killed them to stick an ethernet port on the thing?

Coming Up: Peripherals of the Future

Nikki Blight: is still trying to find that damn princess... when she's not writing fresh code for the217.com.