Stroke of Genius or Not
MAY '09 Update OMG OMG OMG This is probably the closest to a AVGN/Seanbaby writing style where I was a little less forgiving of some of these accesories. The title is Stroke of Genius or Not, so I was intending to cover a ton of accesories, including the good ones! I originally just started with some of the bad ones and never really finished. I believe this here is the first time this has ever been made public on the internet. This here may have a chance of being revived, but I dunno if I really would ever want to take the time to do it nowdays. Who knows though.
Over the years dozens of accesories have been released with the intent to add to enjoyement of a particular system, the problem is there are probably more that will simply instead increase the frustation you'll experience when using them. Whether it was bad functionality or just a crappy gimmick idea that didn't sell,there is no denying the fact that some of stuff released was pretty useless. The NES is probably the system with the most accesories released for it in a attempt to and try increase its enjoyement factor or put you directly into the game. What's funny is that these odd gimmicks often times got some pretty heavy marketing, but just never caught on. Yes this page is going to mostly be a celebration of mediocrity. Let's take a comprehensive look at some of them.
Robotic Operated Buddy (R.O.B)
Don't you think if R.O.B. could talk he would be saying something like "Who's your buddy" in the second pic? He's just like turned his head to look this way.
Yes meet R.O.B. he's supposed to be your buddy and help you out while you play your NES. In theory that actually sounds like a pretty decent idea huh? Let's say you have no friends, well who really needs friends when you have R.O.B. It was even a pack in with the system when it was first released! So take what's included in the Action Set, add him and the game Gyromite and you then had the Deluxe Set as pictured. Here's where things go wrong and get confusing. R.O.B. is actually controlled by the player and what's happening on the game's screen. So it would react by receiving information from the NES and it would then send the information back to the system. This would then affect the game's screen. A lot of people though just didn't understand how it worked or they just didn't have the patience to try and figure it out. Hell that third pic has a lot of attachments I'd be confused silly too! So R.O.B. never gained the support or the hearts of gamers at the time. Nintendo released a second game made for it titled 'Stack-up' which was also the last. Nintendo then decided to stop production of R.O.B and it was then removed from all NES bundle packs. Since no third parties were willing to develop for the thing, he was killed before he even really had a fair chance to live. Those murderers!
One of the incidents that might have prompted a end to his life is that in the included manual there were a lot of precautions listed that you were supposed to follow while using him. Angry children probably broke him by dropping him or beating on him for not being the buddy they had hoped for. Another possibility is that R.O.B. probably contained some small parts. Take small parts and dumb (or maybe just curious) children put them in the same room and you can probably figure out the rest of that. Lastly the Zapper was just soo much more simple to use and just more fun since you weren't dealing with some concept that was most certainly ahead of its time. The only place to find R.O.B. today would probably be on eBay. It seems they are running around $20. So while he failed miserably, I just can't hate him because it's really not his fault entirely that he sucks. I wish I could say I have personally experienced playing along with R.O.B. but I haven't yet. If you want to read about somebody who has you can click here. Well R.O.B. nowdays is actually sort of looked at as kind of hero and he damn well should be as I said he was far ahead of his time. Well that'll end it for this section.
U-Force
The U-force was released by Broderbund in the system's early days and they definitely had big plans for the U-force. They took your standard controller that you know and are comfortable with and tried replacing it with this electronic battle ship looking thing that had a bunch of sensors built into it. You can view their awe inspiring ad campaign and check out how they marketed it. You can also click on the image to the left for a really good look at the front of the box. I find it funny that it somehow got the Nintendo Seal of Quality! Honestly what were they thinking? Maybe Nintendo just got caught in the hype surrounding it and the ultra cool commercial. On the back of the box it does say The amazing U-Force controller is simply the most realistic, most responsive controller ever created for Nintendo games. U-Force uses exclusive, breakthrough technology to sense the actual motion and position of your hands and body. You can actually be a part of every game you play! So yeah basically how it worked is that you'd move your hands over the different sensors to make the character you are controlling do different things. I think problems arose when people realized how dumb they looked playing a game with this thing and also the fact that it didn't work very well. I also think it only supported like several games and I use the term supported loosely. People reacted in different ways when they realized that the U-force didn't deliver the excitement that the commercial promised. Some angry people returned the U-force and got their money back. Some people just threw it in their basement and forgot about it. One person even chose to strap explosives to it and blow it up! While people did do different things with their U-force they all had one thing in common, they all felt it was a over expensive - waste of plastic piece of crap. That's really all there is to say about the U-force. Broderbund thought they were going to change videogaming forever with this breakthrough in game control, but then they woke up to reality and realized they only made one of the worst accesories ever! The only thing it's good for really is to get a few laughs out of looking at it. You can also find U-force on eBay (you can find like almost anything on eBay), but they are really cheap now. One guy running a auction described it as amazingly cool I don't know why he is trying to talk it up. Everyone knows it sucks and you'd either have to be really stupid or a collector to buy one.
The Game Handler
I looked all over the net trying to find infomation on this particular controller, but no one seems to acknowledge it! This abomination can't be any worse than the U-Force! Well I did have one of these back in the day, so I know all there is to know about it. This is the one-of-a-kind, One Hand operational controller for the NES. This stunning technology gave the player the ability to actually change any game and supposedly make it more enjoyable. The main selling point of this controller was that it could be used with just one hand and could do some really odd and mostly useless tricks to your Nintendo games. Some of the tricks included: making Mario run backwards in SMB, making a ninja turtle disapear in TMNT II and making the pitches in the game known simply as baseball do weird tricks like slow motion or 180's in mid air. Sound generally useless? They were yet the makers of the Game Handler thought they were neat tricks that were incredibly fascinating! They didn't even stop there though, the controller even included reversible B & A buttons! Ever wanted A on the left side? Well now you had that choice! Lastly they threw in a video to try and help you get the most out of this piece of crap and justify it's well crappiness. I don't remember the video too much sadly, I just know that it was pretty dumb and just told you how to do some of those tricks. I don't remember how much it originally sold for, but I do remember I got it in a discount bin for like ten dollars and well I always wanted to check out this thing and just see how much it sucked. After doing the pointless tricks in baseball it was time to move onto the other ones. I do remember trying to play Castlevania II with this controller, but I was dying in town a lot. Yeah with the aid of this controller jumping over the space in the blocks now became a challenge. I'll leave you with one last bit of imagery. For some reason I have this picture of just some kid sitting in a chair just enthralled to be playing a game with one hand and using the other hand to eat popcorn from a bowl next to him. Maybe that was the commercial for Game Handler or it was on the video, but I'm not entirely sure. Ah Game Handler you really did suck.
The Power Glove
Another interesting and generally useless controller was Mattel's Power Glove. It was a glove that you would wear and it theoretically would enhance the control of your onscreen character. This obviously worked better in the conception stage than in the actual execution process. The Power Glove did have its appeal and it sold pretty well despite its hefty price. Mattel was deinitely aiming for the coolness factor with this controller. You would strike towards the screen with your right hand and then use your left hand to play with the buttons on it. It probably made some kids feel pretty important, but it wasn't a cool enough fashion statement to wear in public. The glove itself was pretty heavy and required some set up before its actual use. Of course there was a huge promotion surrounding this controller as well. The glove was debuted in the movie "The Wizard." I do remember having a few experiences with trying to use this controller with Mike Tyson's punch-out, but it was quite a daunting task to try and program the thing for the game. The instructions weren't too helpful even with Glove Master and Little Digit these guides who were supposed to help take us into this new dimension in game play. I also recall trying to use the Power Glove with the last boss in Double Dragon II. Infact I think the game froze when the glove was trying to be set up for use in it. Well the thing really wasn't a complete waste. It's usefullness for the Nintendo is definitely in question, but some enlightened individuals hacked the thing and made it possible to use it in low end virtual reality type environments on the PC platform. So I guess it has some use after all, just not for the nintendo. Check out the advertisement, It's very similiar to the U-Force ad actually.
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