I like that the right analogue stick is surrounded by a knob, I guess to play stuff like Pong or Arkanoid but I wonder if any games are actually compatible with it.
Belkin Nostromo N45. Why add a rollbar at the bottom? A question that shall never be answered. It’s held in place by two screws if you’d like to remove it.
It has surprisingly nice feeling buttons and dpad but the sticks are too close together. Mouse mode you control your cursor with a stick.
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This is the only thing I’ve encountered so far that beats the 9 toggle switches on the Color Joypad in the video and some ASCII PS1 pad I don’t recall the name of. Very impressive.
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I had no idea it worked that way. I suppose it would have been too much trouble to actually put a real analog dial on this controller.
There are events at fighting game tournaments where people are give random strange controllers to play each match with. If I ever get one of these I’m donating it to one of those events
Dance Summit 2001 (Bust a Groove 3) controller. A little cutie with 3.5mm sockets on the bottom for you to plug in the grips that you wear on your hands. Slap the front and back of your hands against your leg or your head (or someone else’s) along to the music.
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Pelican Wireless Nerf PS2 controller. It just a standard pad but covered in the same foam as a Nerf bullet so you can throw it at the wall when you get mad! Came in many different colours.
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Gamester Evolution Pad for PC. You might think that the rotary dials could be used for something cool like a throttle and steering, but no. This controller has tilt motion controls and the dials are just for adjusting the sensitivity of the X and Y axes. It uses gameport and works on Win9x and DOS.
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perfect photo, I always have the urge to chew on these nerf controllers 
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Kids Station Microphone controller for PS1. Kids Station is a series of many edutainment games in Japan. Testing one in emulator it seems just pressing L1 on a normal PS1 pad would activate any action needing the microphone, so I’m not convinced it can recognise specific words.
If you know any other versions of this controller with another character let me know!
Tended to stick with the vanilla stock controllers best I could growing up, so my experience with weird controllers is pretty limited. That said, I definitely had one of these for the Sega Genesis growing up:
The “d-pad” was a flat touchpad that I remember being extremely sensitive and difficult to use. Also, you could toggle turbo on or off per button (those red switches above the ABC buttons). I distinctly remember my mom using this thing in some football game we had and doing like turbo-enabled infinite juke spin moves while running the football.
Good times.
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Kids Station Tablet. Bundled with a few different games that all have their own overlays you can slot in. Used for drawing and some minigames. I’d like to know how it detects positions of the pen. Could you get any functionally with a Playstation to USB adapter on PC? Would it work in mouse compatible games?
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Flying Circus RC controller. Like a real RC controller but with enough buttons for all PS2 functions except L3/R3. All buttons are made of rubber. The left stick functions normally but the right can be set to different vertical positions and it won’t spring back to centre.
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This is my Slime PS4 controller. I was super lucky to get this for £30 on eBay when they’re going for about £90.
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The Nyko Alpha Nintendo 64 controller is always wild to me that it was made, for the 14(!) N64 games that allowed for dual stick mode while playing. Dual stick mode of course on the N64 was actually achieved by 2 controllers normally, because playing a game with 2 separate controllers on your N64 sure feels great and normal.
Edit: As an example of how dual controls worked on the N64, one game that had it was Star Wars: Episode 1 - Racer. 1 player could turn it on in some editions of the game to play with two controllers, where the joysticks of both controllers would then correspond to 1 podracer engine.
Unfortunately while this controller looks awesome and does have two sticks, they cannot be used at the same time. There is a switch on the back that swaps between which stick is active.
I really wish it did work like how you described!
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Thanks for clarifying that! Makes it even a weirder controller design in my mind now. The only game I can think of that used D-Pad and Thumbstick was Sin and Punishment, so like when is there a benefit to switching to the right stick instead of the left? What other time does that even come into play?
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Hori Laser Commander for Famicom. Big dpad disc, sliders for adjusting turbo speed and laser activated “buttons”. All you have to do is have your thumb hovering above the “buttons”, you don’t even need to touch them. It has a port on the back you can plug a regular pad and that can inherit the turbo.
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This one looks like it’s the same internally to the Buffalo BSGP1601BK. Sounds like it even has the same shitty face buttons. On top of that this one was covered with that horrible plastic coating thing that turns into goop.
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Hori G.E.A.R. FPS Pad 3. Has extra shoulder buttons that you can bind to anything. Analog wheel on the bottom controls the sensitivity of the sticks. Unfortunately the sticks have a huge deadzone which cannot be removed. Also wish the triggers had a larger surface area. There’s 360 and PS3 versions.
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