This was one of my blog posts, under the title: "Nintendo Peripherals I Own", although it's more acurately titled "NES Peripherals I Own"
Nintendo has come out with a multitude of peripherals for every system they have released. Third party developers even came out with a bunch of them. I don't have very many of them by far, but I do have a respectable collection. It all starts with the ubiquitous orange Zapper. This was the first peripheral that I had, which consequently came with the system via the SMB/Duck Hunt cartridge. (Some of you may be saying that the NES controller was the first peripheral that anybody had for the system, but that wouldn't hold up. Without the controllers, the whole system is useless. They aren't add-ons; they are necessary to the operation of the device). The orange zapper is a strange thing in itself, as the original was grey. Why on earth would they change the color of the zapper to orange? One story is that it looked too much like a real gun (this one can't be serious. I've seen water pistols that looked like perfect replicas of Uzis), so they changed the color because of Nintendo of North Americas strict censorship practices. I acquired one of the grey ones at the thrift store a while back, and I must say; if anybody ever mistook that for a real gun, they would have to be on crack.
The next peripheral I have is the Turbo Touch 360. This thing is weird. Some company called Triax made it, and it must have been an answer to the NES Max. It is pretty fat, and has small wings. The d-pad has some weird touch interface where you don't press anything, but you merely put your thumb on it and it senses which way you want it to go; much like a laptop mouse pad thingy. I hate those things. They are awkward, and on this controller you can never go in one direction. It always senses your thumb in places that you don't intend on having it. There are also the requisite b and a buttons, and a turbo-b and turbo-a button beneath each, respectively. In all, it's a piece of garbage and I never use it.
I also have an NES Advantage. What a weird and gigantic controller. First off, it comes with two plugs. One has a white stripe running down it to tell the cords apart. You plug it into the first and second player ports, and there is a switch on the top right hand side to switch between them. Directly below this switch (the whole thing is aligned on an angle, so in reality is below and slightly to the right) is the select, start, and slow buttons. The slow button is an auto hold button much like the NES power button in that when you press it, it holds until you press it again. To the left are the b and a buttons, auto hold turbo-b and turbo-a buttons, and turbo dials for each button. The dials allow you to control how fast the turbo works. Where the d-pad should be is a joystick. Personally, I always found a joystick to be less than joyful and always had a hard time using them. The biggest problem with this controller is that it is designed for tabletop use, and is very awkward to use while holding. This is why I've only used it once or twice.
The U-Force is the next in a short list of peripherals that I own. This one will be short and sweet, as I've never used it. I bought it, put it in the closet, as it is notoriously terrible, and haven't pulled it out since. As far as I know, it resembles a battleship board, and uses "The Force". No, really it seems to generate a force field between the horizontal and vertical boards and it detects where your hand or whatever is and sends the information to the NES. As I've said, I've never used the thing, so I'm not much of an authority on it.
The last two peripherals I acquired at the same time. One isn't a playable peripheral, as it is an NES 'control deck' cleaner. The directions are as follows:
INSTRUCTIONS
INSERT CLEANER INTO CONTROL DECK. PUSH INTO
DOWN POSITION AND MOVE CLEANER IN AND OUT 5-10
TIMES. ALLOW TO POP UP, THEN REMOVE.
(c) Nintendo
The copyright isn't on there, as the pat. Is pending, but I added it to keep things legal as this was a word for word copy. The thing is black, and resembles a Wisdom Tree cartridge with a gigantic hole in the middle to create a handle. The top part that normally has the end label on it is also half as thick to facilitate moving the cart in and out of the system whilst in the down position. I have also seen a pink version, and am kicking myself for not buying it.
The last thing is something we all know and love, and interestingly Nintendo never officially endorsed it. I was unaware of this until a few months ago, as I always thought it was an official Nintendo product. Who would have known that the hacking peripheral for the NES known as the Game Genie was on the same lines as Color Dreams products? This is arguably one of the coolest peripherals, as it lets you hack the game and get all sorts of different things. You can become invincible, have unlimited ammo, die with one hit, gain unlimited lives, and the list goes on. There are only codes for certain games, and some of them are quite stupid (like the die with one hit code), but most just enhance the game play. Who wouldn't want to run through SMB telling everybody to shove off? Oh yeah. I have the gold version, and I know there is also a black one. The thing looks kind of like a SNES cartridge, but with a game connector in the top (Super 3D Noah's Ark anybody?) and has a thing attached to it to facilitate pulling it out as it could get stuck in the system if the game doesn't hold it.
These are the NES peripherals that I own as of right now. I'm probably forgetting one or two, but I think this blog post is long enough already, so I won't be searching for any I may have forgotten. More to come…well, when I get more!
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