Gaming accessories that almost no one needed

[razorbeamz]

Gaming accessories, especially first party gaming accessories that were stupid, useless, or way too niche.

Nintendo 3DS Circle Pad Pro

Added a second analog stick to the 3DS, communicated with it through the infrared port of all things. Not many games used it but the ones that did benefitted greatly. The New 3DS incorporated this into its design kinda haphazardly with a little trackpoint style nubbin.

Nintendo 3DS XL Circle Pad Pro

Similar to the above but this one was for the 3DS XL. Exclusive to Japan so much rarer.

Nintendo 3DS NFC Reader/Writer

A weird little thing that again, used IR communication. This was made to support amiibo on the vanilla 3DS, 2DS and 3DS XL because they’d added an NFC reader to the New 3DS.

Nintendo amiibo

They’re still making and supporting these. They were made to latch onto the toys-to-life thing that Skylanders and Disney Infinity created. They’re largely useless as anything other than a collectible figurine. They sometimes unlock something in games, but usually they just sit on a shelf.

Nintendo NES Speedboard

Just look at this thing. How on earth is this supposed to make you better at playing? It looks awful.

Sega Activator

An early attempt at motion control that just doesn’t work. A bunch of invisible IR beams get disrupted by stepping over them.

Xbox One Kinect

Originally mandatory for using an Xbox One, quickly discontinued when they realized no one wanted anything to do with it. Also it’s based on a different and worse technology than the original Xbox 360 Kinect.

[dementia]

[Iammadmak]

I had that speedboard things, it was useless

[loki]

the speedboard has an ancestor in the stick station for atari 2600

[loki]

but of course, the kings of stupid accesories are the various game boy power armours

[Cerium]

[meauxdal]

Dumbest one might have to be the Tetris 64 (Japanese exclusive) Bio Sensor

[stylo]

did anyone really like the Gameboy color worm light? seemed completely silly to me, if it’s too dark to play Gameboy you should be in bed… nostalgia factor amazing tho.

[Mikey]

Rez trance vibrator

[ronk]

@razorbeamz

Xbox One Kinect

Originally mandatory for using an Xbox One, quickly discontinued when they realized no one wanted anything to do with it. Also it’s based on a different and worse technology than the original Xbox 360 Kinect.

hey now, don’t forget how incredibly important and super useful these things are to ghost hunters

[loki]

article fails to mention that they took that idea from one of the paranormal activity sequels lol

[Broco]

Once when I was moving, I brought several IKEA bags of old junk to a local electronics recycler place. The guy combed through my stuff and was happily saying he’d take it all for free, until he picked up the Wii Balance Board. Then he visibly grimaced and said “we’ll charge you 20 dollars if you want us to take this”

[razorbeamz]

That’s the Xbox 360 Kinect, which operates on superior technology and is actually kinda cool.

[dylan]

I used this a lot to play pokemon long into the night as a child. I also had a flashlight in my room I would use to read books under the covers.

[daphaknee]

i used it on my first gen gba