Perplexing Peripheral Purchases

[ratsoalbion]

I owned a Game.com once.

Banned.

[AndrewBrown]

Fine, I never liked it here anyway. I'm gonna go play Lights Out on my Game.com.

[Flabyo]

Pff, I not far off my forties and I have plenty of Amiibo sitting on the shelf behind. Including ones that literally don't do anything useful in any game, like the Squid Sisters.

I have Kinect for both of my Xbox consoles, but I didn't buy either of them so not sure that counts (there were definitely perks to working at MS)

I'm amassing a small collection of 'arcade sticks that don't quite work right anymore' because it appears I treat them badly and they don't like it.

I did have a dance mat for DDR for my PlayStation, but that appears to have vanished during one of my recent moves. That's probably the daftest thing I've bought, I've managed so far to escape things like the Dreamcast fishing rod.

[AndrewBrown]

Oh, yep, I also have a Dance Pad for the Mario Edition of Dance Dance Revolution.

Some day I may even play that.

[Suits]

I love a Peripheral I do.

I too have 25+ amiibo, a boxed Nintendo Scope, Mario Kart wheels and a Kinect. Which I don't use.

I also have a few boxed Dreamcast memory cards, a keyboard and the now totally defunct Xbox 360 HD-DVD player. As well some other things in my collection.

I use my Nintendo Balance Board much more that I thought I'd use it and my Wii U Fitmeter, less than I thought I would.

My number one personal perplex peripheral is my Nintendo Four Score. Because I honestly don't think it's ever been used, .

[Suits]

No Dance Mat though !!

[Bakers_12]

Saw this in a game once .... what the hell
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl= ... mrc&uact=8

[Joshihatsumitsu]

My number one personal perplex peripheral is my Nintendo Four Score. Because I honestly don't think it's ever been used, .

That is the first time I've ever seen one of those, and even though I too would never end up using it, I kinda want one now. Maybe it's just the aesthetics of it.

[AndrewBrown]

I think the only games that used the four-way were Bomberman and Gauntlet, and I'm probably wrong about that.

[Flabyo]

I have a Dreamcast VGA adapter that I don't remember ever buying (particularly as they didn't release it in Europe?). On the games it works with it's brilliant, but for reasons I've never quite fathomed only about half my collection actually works with it.

I managed to escape the curse of 'stupid plastic things to clip onto the Gameboy that do naff all' craze that hit in the late 90's. But I did own a Mega CD as a teen, so swings and roundabouts...

[ratsoalbion]

I guess you're aware, but for those who aren't, as I understand it devs themselves literally had to code in their own VGA support to specific titles, hence it not being present in a lot of DC releases.

[Flabyo]

I guess you're aware, but for those who aren't, as I understand it devs themselves literally had to code in their own VGA support to specific titles, hence it not being present in a lot of DC releases.

That machine's OS was a really unhelpful SOB when it came to doing, well, anything. Odd memory architecture, tile based rendering GPU that behaved totally differently to every other console, weird disc format... It still surprises me anyone third party ever got anything done on it sometimes (let alone anything as pretty as Soul Calibur)

We did actually have fishing controllers in the studio when we worked on Sydney 2000 because the TRC for the DC required that you at least recognise all first party controllers and display an appropriate error message. Some games decided to just roll with it and try and make themselves playable with it (see Soul Calibur, again).

[Flabyo]

Did anyone have any of the weird PS1 pads that Namco put out?

I know some people absolutely swore by the NegCon in the days before the Dual Analogue controller appeared.


But the JogCon really wasn't much of a thing...

[Alex79]

I remember using one of those NegCon's back in the day, and I still think its a better idea than an analogue stick for driving games. Much closer to a steering wheel, anyway. Never tried the JogCon though.

[Suits]

Did anyone have any of the weird PS1 pads that Namco put out?

Wow, they look pretty special.

What did the extra functionality achieve ??

[Flabyo]

They were both designed for various iterations of Ridge Racer if I remember right. A lot of driving games supported the NegCon (including Gran Turismo) but I don't think the JogCon saw similar levels of support.

[Alex79]

Did anyone have any of the weird PS1 pads that Namco put out?

Wow, they look pretty special.

What did the extra functionality achieve ??

As Flabyo said, they were primarily made for Ridge Racer. The top one worked really well. It twisted in the middle, and served as analogue steering in the driving games that it supported.

[ratsoalbion]

Indeed, don't forget that until 1997-8 PS1 controllers were 100% digital, so the twisty NegCon offered analogue control in games such as Ridge and WipEout, although given that those games were coded to work with digital controls*, the merits of this were debateable.



*Although yes, Namco partly developed the NC to allow them to sort-of simulate the Ridge coin-op's steering wheel on the home version.

[Flabyo]

It had it's own unique peripheral ID (which was how you told in code what was plugged in) so you could give the player proper analogue control while using it if you wanted. I think the reason we had them around was someone was adding support for them to Rollcage (which had analogue steering in the codebase because it was also on PC and we supported mouse and steering wheels on that).

[eastmcduck]

I've bought/received my fair share of peripherals over the years, most of which I've been pretty happy with, but others not so much. I have a Sega Game Gear screen magnifier I got when I was a kid that's mostly useless. It made my eyes hurt. One of the stranger devices my brother and I picked up was a Microsoft Sidewinder Dual Strike pc controller. This is one we were excited about because it was supposed to be good for first person shooters and other 3D games at the time, but it was very awkward and it didn't take me long to realize that that a keyboard and mouse was already the best solution for FPS's. I also have a Xim edge I bought for my dual nand Xbox 360 that I've never used. It's supposed to be an excellent little gadget that allows you to use a keyboard and mouse to play your Xbox 360 games. I never got around to getting a compatible keyboard and mouse, though, so I have no clue how it works. I'm sure there are plenty of others that I can't think of. I tend to be a little impulsive when it comes to buying gaming peripherals.