At long last I got some hands on time with STEEL BATTALIONS massive 40 button controller and I was impressed. Now let's get one thing straight, the game is rubbish but the controller, wow. The level of immersion was immediate, the number of buttons just to start the bloody thing made you feel like you were in the machine and ready for war. Just walking this lumbering behemoth around with joysticks, foot pedals and lot's of blinky switches was pure magic, pity the gameplay was such a letdown, I could have easily spent many an hour just having fun walking this thing around and getting used to the controls but my time was limited, it got me thinking though.

It was a big gamble to produce such a complex controller for one game but kudos for giving it their best shot, fast forward to today and with updated graphics/gameplay there is an opportunity gone begging. A lot of gamers complain these days about the sameness of modern games so how do you keep the masses happy?

Car racing games have their controllers, I have a my Logitech wheel and spend many happy hours flapping about in all manner of racing titles creating four wheeled mayhem. Stick on a motorbike game and? It's a crying shame that a set of handlebars aren't available for two wheeled racing, wouldn't need to do anything special but the immersion would be there. If the eyetoy/kinect has taught us anything it's that's gamers like to be comfortable when playing their games, we don't want to be jumping around our living rooms just to enjoy a story. However put my behind my steering wheel and I'm more than happy.

Is this a market gone begging? Motorbike handlebars are just one idea, any mech game can/would benefit from having a unique controller, shooters could have seperate hand sticks instead of tiny ones on traditional controllers, flight games teach us how much fun it can be with a unique controller and they don't cost the earth. These are but a few ideas but the mind boggles to think what may be possible. I think I just want my handlebars for starters.