A lot of console gimmicks were basically ignored and abandoned by developers really early on.
Some examples I can think of:
PS2 controllers had pressure sensitive buttons that were very underused.
Sony consoles have had motion controls since the PS3. Very few games outside a small handful of first party stuff supports it. Pretty much nothing on PS4 or PS5 supports gyro aim despite it being well understood as a good control scheme by Nintendo and PC gamers.
The Wii, PS4 and PS5 controllers have a speaker in them. Not a lot of games use this.
Most third party developers just completely ignored the entire dual screen gimmick of the Wii U.
The Switch had an IR camera in the right Joy-Con. Something like six games total made any use of it.
Just a hunch but I think the Switch 2 camera is going to be abandoned soon.
The 3DS had that AR capability to show 3D objects in the camera view. I think outside of the inbuilt apps and a couple games like Bravely Default, not many games made use of it.
also, maybe not really gimmicks, but I think some consoles like SNES have extra graphics modes that only a handful of games if any ever used.
The Nintendo DS was probably the single console with the highest adoption rate of its gimmicks of all time (well, maybe the Wii too), but its microphone didn’t get that much use, considering. And I know I was never happy to see it show up in a game. Great, now I have to yell at my DS in public. Or, of course, just blow right into the mic hole, the last resort of the coward.
This was my immediate thought. The other thing I remembered was that it could recognize in game that you closed and opened the DS which I remember being used once to like, stamp something?
Apparently Phantom Hourglass played around with that concept. TWEWY let you close the game to put it into streetpass mode to collect a different type of experience points, required to level certain pins. Streetpass is probably the most used of the DS off-mainstream features in general.
I feel like one of my only memories of the dreamcast was like a chocobo tamogachi type thing? I never had one but they were hot in college so it was something I only ever saw in passing.
With this, it was unfortunate for the Wii U that it launched when the trend toward 3-console-targeted games had already been established (which was a problem for the Wii too) and was intensifying. I always wondered what could have ben done if they’d figured out how to allow players to use their 3DSes as controllers/second (and third) screens instead of the Wii U gamepad.
The ability to use Gameboy Advances on the Gamecube for games like Four Swords and Crystal Chronicles was ultimately underexplored.
The PS4 and PS5 trackpad things are basically useless and nearly everyone uses them as just a select button ().
The Vita back-trackpad thing, I think, was pretty well underused too, because… what the hell?
The Pac Man vs with a GBA was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had. Three players are ghosts on the tv screen who see a tiny fraction of the maze. The GBA player has the advance and sees the full maze. When a ghost gets pac man they simply switch controllers, and the game was able to track this swap over so many rounds to see who wins. It was a lot of fun
ZombiU or whatever did a really cool job of using the controller screen. I’ll never play Zombi because it’ll suck to not have that. And that’s why those gimmicks were so cool when actually utilized.
i think there might have been such a thing for final fantasy viii on ps1’s pocketstation, but square never released a dreamcast game as far as i can remember.
HOWEVER: sonic adventure had a little vmu game where you could put one of your chao in there, and it would go on a long walk, finding items and asking you questions. also, before the dreamcast was even released in japan, you could buy a special green vmu preloaded with the kaiju-raising game from launch title godzilla generations.
in general, vmu games were mostly just in early releases, though a few later titles had them, too. one feature that really was underused was using the vmu’s screen (visible through a little window in the controller, in case anyone doesn’t know) during dreamcast gameplay. the only game i can think of that made use of this was sonic shuffle, where in a multiplayer game, if every player had a vmu in their controller, you oculd look at your hand of cards on there instead of having them displayed on the tv for all to see.
the pocketstation is one that was doomed by sony themselves: they decided it was going to be a japan-only thing, so beyond a couple of titles made specifically to use it and a couple of third party implimentations like ffviii, street fighter alpha 3, and ridge racer type 4, it was quickly abandoned because none of the third parties with the resources to spend on developing for it wanted to bother anymore.
I was gonna say the GBC IR sensor/emitter, but it looks like dozens of games did have some functionality. It’s just the functionality sounds incredibly limited.
NES’s ROB especially since it was conceived as a selling point of early versions of the system
The 2600’s black and white switch only put the game in black and white friendly contrasting colors for a handful of games, and it got used for other purposes like pausing on a lot of later games.
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