Best games with weird peripheral devices

[peanutbutter]

Listening to the DJ Hero episode of Cane and Rinse and getting very tempted to just buy the game and controller seeing as they're like £2 in CEX atm, long been tempted to do the same for Rock Band too. I imagine the low prices are more down to the crazy amounts of space they can take up as opposed to people hating the games now.

Are there any games which needed weird controllers or whatever other kind of peripherals there might be that you absolutely love? Would you still stand by them today?



To expand the scope a little more, are there any games on devices with specific quirks that are hard to emulate effectively today? I can imagine there's a few DS/3DS games that are at the very least horrible to look at with whatever layout emulators use? And the resistive touch screens of DS and Wii U games perhaps offered a level of precision that isn't matched very well with capacitive touch screens (e.g. I could easily imagine Mario Maker being a bit more of a pain to work with).

[touchingcloth]

Are resistive screens more accurate than capacitive ones? The ones I've used have always been shite.

Anyhoo, with peripherals, Nintendo have pretty good form. There was the Gameboy camera what you could get, and also a cabke which would link your Gameboy (pre-DS - certainly the Color if not the original) to your N64. Some games would use your Gameboy as an extra information screen (Majora's Mask did this I think), and I might be misremembering here but I think there were some games where you could link your Gameboy Camera to your N64 and use photos of real faces on in-game characters.

Of course, there was the 64DD, and the Satellaview modem for the SNES which made whole games available for download which were never released on physical media. Surely some of those games are now lost forever.

[Twed]

I have a feeling the Ring Fit Adventure is going to be pretty well-received, so maybe a new entry in this category soon.

[Sebastian Cobb]

My dad borrowed this off a colleague when I was a lad. Thought the FMV was space-age at the time.



The aiming of the IR gun was total plops and the trick was to lie to the machine and say you were playing with a trackball so it drew a crosshair on the screen.

[Blue Jam]

Wii Sex never happened, did it? Imagine how calm Reddit would be if it had.

[peanutbutter]

Are resistive screens more accurate than capacitive ones? The ones I've used have always been shite.

They are with the stylus, at a lower cost anyways; I'm sure an iPad pro has an amazing touch screen even without a pencil

[Sin Agog]

To expand the scope a little more

Good one.

[touchingcloth]

[momatt]

Listening to the DJ Hero episode of Cane and Rinse and getting very tempted to just buy the game and controller seeing as they're like £2 in CEX atm

DJ Hero is great fun, do it!
I love how they worked with some genuinely great musicians for the exclusive mash-up tunes (DJ Shadow, QBert, Grandmaster Flash etc.).

[Huxleys Babkins]

I still listen to the mixes from DJ Hero 1 and 2, they are that good. They caught lightning in a bottle with DJ Hero and everyone slept on it. It's as close to perfect as any rhythm game could be.

[buzby]

The Densha De Go! PC and console train sims  have had a number of custom 'dead man's handle' train contollers made for them over the years by Taito:
Type 1:

Type 2:

Shinkansen version (only $600!)

[NoSleep]

I had one of these to play GT2 on the PSX (I can't seem to locate it anywhere so it may have expired and got thrown away; can't remember):



The the two halves rotate backward and forward for steering. The I & II buttons have about 1cm play are sprung to give finer analog control for acceleration and braking by pushing them gradually down. The L shoulder button is similarly analog. Sensitivity was fine-adjustable within GT2.

I got quite addicted to playing GT2 with this and was disappointed that it didn't work with GT3 on the PS2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUFbnfj2V1Y

[buzby]

I had one of these to play GT2 on the PSX (I can't seem to locate it anywhere so it may have expired and got thrown away; can't remember):



The the two halves rotate backward and forward for steering. The I & II buttons have about 1cm play are sprung to give finer analog control for acceleration and braking by pushing them gradually down. The L shoulder button is similarly analog. Sensitivity was fine-adjustable within GT2.

I got quite addicted to playing GT2 with this and was disappointed that it didn't work with GT3 on the PS2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUFbnfj2V1Y

The neGcon pad was was developed by Namco for Ridge Racer, but it's popularity led to support for it being implemented in other developer's games, and some third party peripheral manufacturers copied the signalling and interface for their PS1 steering wheels. By the time the PS2 came along the Dual Analogue controllers were well established and only a handful of PS2 games supported the neGcon protocol.

For Ridge Racer Type 4 they came up with the Jogcon:

That large dial was the steering control, but what made it unique at the time was that it had a stepper motor in it to provide force feedback.

[Quote]

Steel Battalion on xBox takes the biscuit in terms of ridiculously over the top controllers.



There were some foot pedals as well. Never had any interest in those Japanese mech games but that controller looked cool - in a 'this would be amazing if I was still 7' type way.