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5. NES Advantage – NES – 1987
Now this here is a solid controller. The legendary NES gamepad was truly versatile and revolutionary, but if you wanted an arcade experience with added features, the NES Advantage was the way to go. It’s a bulky gamestick, with an 8-direction joystick that still feels as solid and responsive as the day it was made. In addition to that, we have the other NES buttons, like A and B, but these are huge inputs that are very satisfying to crunch. The bottom of the Advantage is a sheet of stainless steel, which means this thing can take a beating.
Besides its incredibly sturdy build and arcade-like quality, the NES Advantage also introduced built-in turbo functionality. You can adjust the option to make the A or B buttons fire rapidly, and it was set with a dial, allowing you customize just how turbo you wanted your turbo– something that most controllers never had. The controller had an odd “slow” function as well that would press the start button repeatedly. Hey, don’t ask me what that’s even for.
Still, the NES Advantage is recognized as one of the best controllers Nintendo has ever made. Many retro gaming fans still swear by the gamestick, and will cherish them to the end. If you ask me, whatever controller that works best for a particular game is always the ideal option. But I can’t deny the awesome presence of the NES Advantage.
Technical nitpick: The NES Zapper doesn’t need a curved CRT, just a sufficiently bright and fast (fast being the sticking point with modern TVs) display. Pull the trigger and the screen goes black, with a bright box covering one “hit” zone, for one 60th of a second per on-screen target. Some games let you aim at a light bulb and win, if it wasn’t checking for dark during the surrounding frames.
The Super Scope was even crazier; its hit or miss mechanism was actually based on the timing of when individual pixels were being lit on the screen within that 1/60th of a second timeslice. (Notice how no Super Scope game ever used very dark colors?)
We might someday build a plasma or LCD bright and fast enough to work with the Zapper, but the Super Scope has almost no chance. :^)
I’m kind of sad that the power pad for NES didn’t make the list even as an honorable mention. I remember hours spent playing World Class Track Meet with that thing and trying to figure out how long I could jump off the mat before jumping back on to get insane scores. Of course, it always ended up being me and my sister kneeling next to the mat slapping the run buttons as fast as we could… Good times.
Also, where were the good peripherals for SNES. I honestly can’t think of any besides the Super Game Boy.
The rumble pak was great for one reason… The video tape that Nintendo Power sent in the mail advertising Star Fox 64 and the rumble pak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgEZJt911Qw