Mercury Joystick! 5 Incredible and Even Gaming Game Controllers That Were Ahead of Their Time

Over the years, we’ve all gotten used to standardizing the methods of controlling games. Console players have gamepads, PC gamers have keyboard + mouse, racing games have a good steering wheel, and fighting games have an arcade stick or hitbox.

And the market nowadays reacts very painfully to any radical experiments of local governments.

However, it wasn’t always like this. Today I will show you some interesting, strange and frankly crazy stuff to control games.

1. Tony Hawk RIDE, which will definitely make you fall

Personal observation has shown that out of 10 fans of the old Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, 5 can currently skateboard (By the way, I’m among them).

For the rest of those who couldn’t, they came up with a special gamepad, which was sold in a set with the game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater RIDE.

RIDE is a fairly innovative controller for its time. It uses a combination of motion sensors and accelerometers that detect foot movement and the amount of pressure on different parts of the board. The main idea was for the player to be able to perform complex tricks and stunts in the game using simple foot movements. The buttons on the controller are also located on the back and are used to perform tricks.

However, the game was a flop and the controller idea never caught on. Although he managed to improve it in the second version, the main problems such as poor response and interaction with the player’s body were never fixed. Unfortunately, no more controllers like this appeared on the market and the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series continued to face negative reviews. The failure of RIDE was one of the factors that led to the decline of the franchise.

2. Very realistic Steel Battalion Controller

Steel Battalion is an ambitious project from the Japanese studio Capcom, which is a simulator of combat robots. In this game, the player will become the leader of a war for peace by controlling a remote control robotic mech.

To maximize the gaming experience, the game came with a special controller. It looks small in the photo, but when I saw it in person, it seemed huge to me. The controller has 40 function buttons, two joysticks, and three pedals. Every part of the controller was involved in the gameplay, and each robot (called vertical tanks in the game) had its own unique layout and control method.

At the beginning of each mission, the pilot had to go through the robot’s explanation procedure. This required pressing buttons, clicking switches, and so on in a certain order. An error in this procedure resulted in the game ending, so the algorithm had to be known by heart, without prompting.

But the coolest thing was the eject button – big, red and under glass. Your life depended on it. If you didn’t leave the car in time with extreme damage, the pilot died, and the game erased the save. It was easy for a newbie to die, even at the very beginning of the game, and the further you went, the harder it became.

Steel Battalion is considered a hidden gem of the original Xbox library. However, the high cost of production and the high final price of the set prevent the project from becoming a mass project.

3. Deadly Katana: Soul

The PlayStation 2 and Xbox Original era can be described as a time of bold experiments and unusual gaming solutions. Capcom’s Onimusha series is an interesting combination of Resident Evil elements and samurai aesthetics.

The third part became a real blockbuster with the unexpected participation of Jean Reno in the main video. To promote this game, Hori, a famous gamepad manufacturer, released a unique device.

Katana: The Soul was actively used in the game’s advertising campaign and was actually a wireless replacement for the DualShock 2, only in addition to the buttons, the controller also had a motion sensor. I dreamed of controlling a player and counting the chances of winning the game. In principle, these are all its functions. The rest of the game control was carried out using sticks, which were not exactly conveniently located on the handle.

Of course, all this worked frankly poorly, and it only took a couple of hours – it used up the batteries very quickly. It was inconvenient to play, the sensors read movements every other time, and, as a rule, the sword was sent to the shelf before the batteries ran out. But as merch dedicated to the project, the thing is really cool. I look good in the collection.

4. The Atari Mindlink, Ahead of Its Time

Honestly, the idea of ​​controlling a game is a strong idea that sounds futuristic and crazy even in 2024, let alone 1984.

Atari Mindlink is a product of the gaming industry, released in 1983. After that, every manufacturer tried its best to return the interest of buyers to games. The device was positioned as the first device that allows you to control the game without hands.

According to the engineers’ idea, infrared sensors were supposed to track the movement of forehead muscles (for this, the player had to frown slightly to “think” about the process) and transmit the received information to the game. However, the device was never released for sale.

Internal tests have shown that for full control in games specifically designed for this (but they were cancelled), the player must constantly move his eyebrows. Due to constant tension, a severe headache quickly developed.

5. The most dangerous controller in the world Le Stick

But it was not only the crisis gaming industry of 1983 that became a catalyst for bold experiments. In 1981, Datasoft introduced the world’s first motion controller, simply named Le Stick.

Le Stik emerged from itself as essentially a joystick without a lower platform. To calculate the use of the nine-pin size standard for those years, he approached all popular platforms of those years, for example, the Atari 2600.

And unlike Mindlink, the device actually worked. The motion control technology was implemented using a mercury switch in the stick body. When Le Stick was tilted, for example, to the left, the mercury in the switch flowed in the direction of tilt and closed the contacts, transmitting a signal to turn/move to the left. Yes, it’s better to be more careful, no one wants to breathe mercury vapor from a broken flask?

In addition, the disadvantages also included not very high accuracy of tilt registration compared to classic joysticks of those years. But in general, the device had a certain success in Europe, despite the rather high price for those years. It is Datasoft Le Stick that is considered the great-grandfather of modern gamepads with a gyroscope.

The accessories market has become very boring

Yes, I know. There are actually much more unusual controllers, and I left a lot of them overboard. And I did this on purpose first of all, so that in the comments they would remind me about the chainsaw controller and the robot from Nintendo, for example.

By the way, this way I will understand that you found the material interesting, and in the second part we will publish even deeper into the world of unusual gaming devices. Have a nice day!