It's a good thing for companies to experiment. Some times these experiments pay off and we get to play with awesome new things. Most of the time, they just wind up in a box in a closet somewhere to be sold at a Yard Sale some day. Here are the dumbest video game accessories.
SEGA Genesis Activator
The fantasy of this sounded awesome. You get to actually play all of your favorite game using just your own body as a controller. It was going to be the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Reality set in when you started playing it and got beaten up by your little sister who just flailed wildy. At least it didn't last long because you got way too tired to keep playing after 5 minutes.
Gaming Chairs
It seems like a lot of money to spend on a chair with speakers in it, but look at it this way. You can sell all of your old furniture that's been gathering dust because no one ever comes over to your apartment. What's the point of even having that love seat. Just sit in this bad boy the rest of your life.
SEGA Channel Adapter
This was the first downloadable game channel available. It plugged in to your SEGA Genesis and allowed you to play from a rotating list of games. Due to restrictions of bandwidth, they weren't able to give you full copies of the games. Most commonly, games were missing characters, but they also sometimes were missing whole chunks of games. It's quite a rude awakening to show up to a friend's house and get your butt kicked in Street Fighter by a character that you didn't even know existed.
Nintendo Donkey Konga
Nintendo wanted to cash in on the instruments game craze. nintendo decided to go with bongos. You know, cause the kids are way in to bongos these days. Of course, these didn't catch on so going the way of R.O.B., the Power Glove, and the Power Pad.
Gaming Eyewear
You want to be a cool dude? You got to wear some cool dude glasses. Only cool dudes wear glasses that are headset compatible. They claim to reduce eye strain during long gaming sessions. Unfortunately, they don't make glasses to reduce eye strain for people that have to look at you while you wear these things.
N64 Rumble Pack
This wasn't even kind of a cool idea to start with. It vibrated just enough to make your hands a little numb if you played too long, and weighed about 5 pounds. The worst thing about it was that you had to keep feeding it batteries which you had to do or your friends would complain about it. Then you'd get a big fight with them! Why do you got to cause so much drama, Rumble Pack?
DJ Hero Controller
With the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, they wanted to figure out new instruments that could be plugged in to a gaming console. It's so fun to rock out on a fake guitar or set of drums. It's not so much fun to rock out on a turntable. Most big name DJs do most of their mixing in studio and not live. Deadmau5 famously said that DJs just show and press play. That's what this controller should have been, just a giant spacebar.
Game Boy Camera and Printer
I really wish some famous photographer would use the Game Boy Camera and Printer to revolutionize the photography world. If they were to get popular enough, maybe the Game Boy Camera would make a comeback and we'd start to see feature films shot only with the Game Boy Camera. It could be a story about a firetruck and a Game Boy Printer who fall in love, but the Game Boy Printer's stickers fade in the sunlight because they're not meant to be put on fire truck bumpers. It could be called Burning Stickyness and star Julia Roberts and Kimbo Slice.
Konami LaserScope
The Konami Laserscope for the NES was a head mounted Zapper with a microphone trigger. All you had to do was yell the word "Fire!" This thing was nearly impossible to aim. Also, when using this, make sure that you're in a sound proof room with the TV on mute because it fired at almost any noise including game audio.
XBAND Modem
This was a modem that you could play a limited amount of SEGA Genesis and SNES games with your friends on-line. It seemed like a great idea, but the service just never worked that well. Often games would be so laggy that you couldn't even play them.
What dumb accessories did you get your parents to buy you? Let me know on twitter @zachlunch or in the comments below!
