Weird gaming accessories you owned

[Gorse]

Didja ever have any weird supplemental add-on hardware for your game consoles? The more redundant, garish, and clunky, the better!

I had a Nintendo e-Reader, which my dad bought off eBay in the early 2000s. If you've never heard of this beast, it was, like... this thing that you shoved into your Gameboy Advance, then ran paper cards across the top of to play games in the most cumbersome way imaginable. It's a massive unit, about the size of a GBA SP from top to bottom, and has this weird redundant nub that doesn't actually do anything but secure the device into the console. (On the SP, that nub just hangs out at the bottom of the control area, directly below the speaker.) Every game came on separately-packaged cards, of course, but most of them required a lot of cards to run (8 cards per game was common), and you had to scan them all in order – if you lost even a single one, you were fucked.

Outside of barebones NES ports, the e-Reader also had a few very simple original games – mostly just little puzzles – and offered a crude form of DLC through scannable items for some compatible first-party games. I had cards for the NES versions of Pinball and Ice Climbers, a Fire Flower card for Super Mario Advance 4, and the Game & Watch version of Manhole (the visuals of which have cemented themselves into my cranial pleasure receptors). I also had the Kirby Slide Puzzle Card, which I thought was extremely rare and expensive, but it turns out I'd confused it with something else. It was a slow, miserable device that seemed to only work reluctantly, but I still love the e-Reader and its beautiful credits music. Plus, it gave me my single favourite video game commercial ever:

SO WHAT WEIRD ACCESSORIES DID YOU OWN!?!?!?

 

[MajesticSiN]

I had a gameboy camera back in the day and it was pretty nifty.

 

[Waffles]

I had a weird joystick called "Magnum 6", which was actually quite great, but seemed to be geared towards fighting games, despite being a stick that would feel MUCH more at home on a flying sim, with its 860 buttons.

It was also great for steering my car on Interstate Nitro Pack 76.

 

[DunkeyKong]

I think I don't have any game accessories since having a console alone is enough
But I gotta say the GameBoy camera and printer is one of the most weirdest yet creative piece of work
The easter egg is still the creepiest thing I've ever seen

 

[Shadowruls]

Can't think of anything particularly special, but I do still have my GBA to NGC link cable.

 

[Shadowruls]

Didja ever have any weird supplemental add-on hardware for your game consoles? The more redundant, garish, and clunky, the better!

I had a Nintendo e-Reader, which my dad bought off eBay in the early 2000s. If you've never heard of this beast, it was, like... this thing that you shoved into your Gameboy Advance, then ran paper cards across the top of to play games in the most cumbersome way imaginable. It's a massive unit, about the size of a GBA SP from top to bottom, and has this weird redundant nub that doesn't actually do anything but secure the device into the console. (On the SP, that nub just hangs out at the bottom of the control area, directly below the speaker.) Every game came on separately-packaged cards, of course, but most of them required a lot of cards to run (8 cards per game was common), and you had to scan them all in order – if you lost even a single one, you were fucked.

Outside of barebones NES ports, the e-Reader also had a few very simple original games – mostly just little puzzles – and offered a crude form of DLC through scannable items for some compatible first-party games. I had cards for the NES versions of Pinball and Ice Climbers, a Fire Flower card for Super Mario Advance 4, and the Game & Watch version of Manhole (the visuals of which have cemented themselves into my cranial pleasure receptors). I also had the Kirby Slide Puzzle Card, which I thought was extremely rare and expensive, but it turns out I'd confused it with something else. It was a slow, miserable device that seemed to only work reluctantly, but I still love the e-Reader and its beautiful credits music. Plus, it gave me my single favourite video game commercial ever:

SO WHAT WEIRD ACCESSORIES DID YOU OWN!?!?!?

I still laugh at the fact that they used two cards to patch pokemon Ruby and Sapphire

 

[syntheticErik]

The Suncom Mothership for the NES. It was marketed as a joystick but it was really a plastic shell you slid your regular NES gamepad inside of that had a flightstick style stick on top and two oddly shaped/placed buttons. I think my dad got it for me at a yard sale or flea market. Thing was an absolute piece of crap, both in terms of build quality and usability.

 

[Shadowruls]

The Suncom Mothership for the NES. It was marketed as a joystick but it was really a plastic shell you slid your regular NES gamepad inside of that had a flightstick style stick on top and two oddly shaped/placed buttons. I think my dad got it for me at a yard sale or flea market. Thing was an absolute piece of crap, both in terms of build quality and usability.

Weird, we have one of the actual joystick ones, and it is its own controller..... not sure where it got off to though

 

[CRTRebel]

The Handy Boy...never in my life have I purchased something so insulting. I remember that driven by frustration I made a gift of it to my sister, who in turn threw it in the garbage....

 

[DJPlace]

nothing is more odd then this PS1 accessories/controller hybrid. it's a fishing controller

 

[syntheticErik]

Weird, we have one of the actual joystick ones, and it is its own controller..... not sure where it got off to though

Not mine, just found it in a Google search. There wasn't quite enough clearance for the cord on the right side, even as a kid it felt uncomfortable hard crimping it like that. Then as the controller slid in it clicked hard against the plastic mechanism on the underside of the joystick and buttons; that ended up being the death of mine, the parts that press the buttons on the gamepad eventually just cracked off.

 

[DJPlace]

this is a thing really it is... it was parnetal control's before parnetal control's were a thing.

 

[DunkeyKong]

this is a thing really it is... it was parnetal control's before parnetal control's were a thing.
View attachment 1483

This is how a lockpicking master was born

 

[Don Patch]

The Handy Boy...never in my life have I purchased something so insulting. I remember that driven by frustration I made a gift of it to my sister, who in turn threw it in the garbage....

View attachment 1468

Yo! That thing is "Beast Mode" 100%!

 

[myncy]

I still laugh at the fact that they used two cards to patch pokemon Ruby and Sapphire

The E Reader might be my favorite. I remember getting a bunch of promotional cards that had extremely simple games, or different animations via Pokemon cards. I wish I bought a few more games for it, but I enjoy that my first experience with Ice Climbers involved scanning 10 cards to get to play it.

 

[Boo Man]

dont know if this counts but i had a ps1 mouse for Red Alert
i think it worked with a few other games like Broken Sword n stuff
its not wacky or anything but it was kinda weird