Hot Air: Junked

Much like any other game system, the DS had its shared of peripherals.  And, as we have become accustomed to over the decades, many of these peripherals and accessories were under-utilized, at best.  Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and reminisce about DS’s forgotten, faded add-ons.

DS Rumble Pak: It plugged into Slot 2 of the original DS and brought force feedback to the portable gaming scene.  Certain games like Metroid Prime Pinball and Star Fox Command were made to be played with it.  There were a share of problems, however.  Like how the DS Rumble Pak jolted in weird directions on occasion, how it made crazy noises that totally distracted you from the game, and singled you out for attention with the volume down riding the bus or on the subway or such.  Plus, the advent of DSi, with only one slot, made it totally obsolete.

Guitar Grip: A clever way of getting around the system limitations of the DS to make the real Guitar Hero experience portable. Despite having fewer fret buttons than its home console contemporaries, the Guitar Grip was a reasonable way to manage the experience.  Unfortunately, much like the above, DSi really made the Guitar Grip useless, and many who did use it got painful hand cramps.  Add to that the Guitar Hero series has already been killed off completely by Activision.  Oops.

Slide Controller: Unlike the other accessories listed here, the Slide Controller was really only intended for one game:  Slide Adventure: MAGKID.  It– again– plugged into DS’s second slot and worked as kind of a stand for the system.  The player slid the system around on a table top or other flat surface, and the Slide Controller sensed the motion much like an optical mouse would.  Since this was technically only made for one game, it’s not a huge disaster or anything.

Nintendo Wi-Fi Dongle: This wasn’t a DS-specific device, but it was as much intended for DS gamers as for Wii users.  The reason is that it is patently useless for non-Nintendo devices.  The only situation where the dongle is your best, most cost-effective kind of Wi-Fi is the situation where you have a desktop computer with a wired internet connection, a Wii, a DS, and nothing else.  Plus, unless you have a PC that runs Windows XP, the dongle won’t even be able to interface with your connection, regardless.  BAM.

DS Headset: Did you even know there WAS a DS Headset?  Well, there was.  And you could use it to listen in and have voice chat with your fellow gamers who play all of those DS games that support voice chat.  This piece of hardware would have been even slightly useful if most of those six games didn’t also support chat through the built-in DS microphone.  Also, how many times did you actually use DS voice chat on those games, anyway?  I can count those times on one finger for myself.