Gimmicky failures

It’s been pretty well established that I like gimmicky video game accessories. So it would follow that I’d have a pretty large selection of the things. But, not all of them can be awesome, can they?

Uh, well, no. No they can’t.

Like the Super Controller. It was little more than a plastic shell that went over the NES controller, and you could stick a tiny joystick into the hole on the crosspad.

Yeah, it didn’t work very well, made the controller way too thick, and I had a really hard time trying to hold onto the tiny joystick with my left thumb and forefinger while holding the controller aloft with the other hand. Besides, it just looked silly.

Or the Nakitek Game Saver+. It’s a clunky monstrosity that took batteries and / or A/C power. The idea was that you could play whatever game you wanted, press some magic button combination on your controller, and the game would be suspended in the thing’s RAM for as long as the thing had power. You could then take a break and come back to your position later, or you could take it out (game still mounted in it) take it to another SNES and resume from where you left off. Sounds great, right?

Yeah, maybe, if it worked. I fished mine from the bottom of a bargain bin for a couple of bucks, so I didn’t really have high hopes for the thing, which turned out to be a Good Thing(tm). Either my controller was broken or my Game Saver was, but I couldn’t get the magic key combination to work at all, which meant that I spent five of my best dollars on an ugly piece of plastic.