The Weirdest Gaming Accessories Ever Made

A look back at a time when controllers alone weren’t enough.

Gaming history is full of companies trying to reinvent how players interact with games. Sometimes, that produced genuine breakthroughs, like analog sticks, rumble functionality, and motion controls.

Other times, it produced plastic instruments, inflatable motorcycles, giant robots, and controllers you operated with your eyebrows.

Gaming’s strangest accessories weren’t necessarily bad. Many were ambitious attempts to make games more physical, immersive, or exciting – and their failures are often more interesting than another ordinary controller.

Here are just some of the strangest gaming accessories throughout history.

The Nintendo Power Glove: The Future, According to 1989

The Nintendo Power Glove was released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Word on the player’s arm, it used hand movements and finger controls to maneuver through games.

Now, to be fair, the Power Glove looked incredibly futuristic for its era, and it was an innovative approach to reinventing how we play games.

But players found the Power Glove to be famously awkward and imprecise in actual use. Only a tiny number of games were specifically designed around it, making it difficult to use in everyday gaming.

That said, the Power Glove’s prominent appearance in the film The Wizard helped turn it into a cultural icon.

Even though the Power Glove failed as a practical controller, it still succeeded culturally. But somehow, strapping a controller to your arm was only the beginning.

Nintendo’s R.O.B.: The Robot You Played Games With

R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy, was Nintendo’s next big experiment in reinventing controllers. R.O.B. came bundled with some early NES packages in North America; it responded to flashes from the television.

R.O.B. also used physical accessories alongside games like Gyromite. Despite its innovative control mechanism, only two compatible games were ever released; playing with R.O.B. was also far more cumbersome than simply using a controller.

However, despite R.O.B.’s failure as a practical controller, it helped Nintendo present the NES as something different from the game consoles associated with the North American video game crash.

Ultimately, one of gaming’s weirdest accessories may have helped Nintendo get the NES into people’s homes – and that’s a win for gaming culture.

SEGA Activator – What if the Controller Was the Floor?

The SEGA Activator was an octagonal infrared controller that was placed on the floor. Released during the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive era, players stood inside the controller, using their arms or legs to trigger infrared beams that translated into controller inputs. 

The Activator was marketed heavily around fighting games, and it required plenty of room to use. It was also notoriously finicky. Despite its operational problems, though, the Activator was an early attempt at full-body motion gaming more than a decade before the Wii/Kinect era. Ultimately, there was a legitimately good idea hiding inside the deeply impractical execution.

Aura Interactor – Finally, You Can Wear Your Subwoofer

The Aura Interactor was a peak 1990s gaming accessory. It was essentially a backpack containing a tactile transducer; it converted game audio into vibrations you could physically feel.

This accessory was advertised as making games more immersive. Rather than requiring specialized games to work with it, though, the Interactor was compatible with a wide variety of consoles and audio sources.

There was something inherently comedic about putting on a giant backpack so explosions could vibrate directly against your torso. While this was a weird concept, it’s also an ancestor of modern haptic technology, making it an ahead-of-its-time innovation.

Nintendo GameBoy Camera and Printer – Instagram, 1998 Edition

These gaming accessories were both weird and legitimately fun to use.

The Game Boy Camera plugged into the cartridge slot, taking extremely low-resolution monochrome photographs of whatever was in front of it. The camera also included bizarre minigames and editing features, so you could play photo-based games and edit photos in real time.

Meanwhile, the Game Boy Printer used thermal paper to print images and other compatible game content. This was delightfully unnecessary, but the underlying idea of taking, manipulating, and sharing photos through a gaming device looks strangely prescient decades later. Effectively, Nintendo accidentally anticipated the social-media camera experience using a four-shade Game Boy screen.

Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller: Subtlety is for Cowards

The Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw controller was literally a controller shaped like a blood-covered chainsaw. Produced by NubyTech, versions of this controller were released for both the GameCube and the PlayStation 2.

This controller, while looking fun to play with, was designed to be just as much a collector’s item as an actual controller. The buttons were scattered around an object that was clearly never designed to be ergonomic. 

The controller was also packaged as a display piece, representing the glorious mid-2000s era when third-party peripheral makers seemingly asked, “Could this controller instead be a giant piece of merchandise?”

Steel Battalion Controller: Your Coffee Table is Now a Mech Cockpit

The Steel Battalion controller was released for Capcom’s Steel Battalion on the original Xbox. This massive controller featured roughly 40 buttons and switches, plus twin sticks, pedals, and various cockpit controls. It actually included a startup sequence, and even had an eject button. (Forgetting to eject before your mech was destroyed could have serious in-game consequences.)

The absurdity of this controller was absolutely intentional – and it worked. Unlike many novelty peripherals, this controller existed because Capcom wanted operating a Vertical Tank to feel complicated. The difference between a gimmick and immersion may simply be whether the game fully commits to the gimmick.

Tony Hawk’s Ride Skateboard: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Tony Hawk: Ride shipped with a skateboard-shaped motion controller that players stood on, physically mimicking skateboarding movements as they played. The sensors on the skateboard would detect leaning, turning, and tricks. However, this peripheral was notoriously expensive, which dramatically increased this game’s barrier to entry.

Reception to this controller was particularly poor, especially around the controls – it was simplicity that made earlier Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games work well, so adding this complexity was seen as a gimmick.

Wii Vitality Sensor: The Weird Accessory That Never Arrived

By the Wii era, gaming peripherals had reached the point where Nintendo apparently wanted your console to know whether you were relaxed enough.

The Wii Vitality Sensor was announced by Nintendo at E3 2009. It was a finger sensor designed to measure the player’s pulse while playing games. Nintendo advertised it as a means of measuring relaxation and potentially influencing gameplay. 

This accessory, though, was never commercially released – Nintendo eventually abandoned it after difficulties during development and testing.

Weird Hardware Makes Gaming More Interesting

Most of these devices didn’t become the standard. But the impulses behind them absolutely survived. 

The Power Glove and Activator were responsible for pioneering motion controls in gaming, while the Aura Interactor introduced sophisticated haptics. The Game Boy Camera introduced social features in gaming hardware, while Steel Battalion proved that specialized sim controllers had a place in gaming.

For every strange peripheral destined for the bargain bin, there’s an idea that might quietly become normal 20 years later.