The Top 5 Controllers Worse Than the Jaguar's

Posted by JerryTerrifying On Friday, January 14, 2011 9 comments

People like to tear apart the poor old Atari Jaguar and chief amongst the criticism is the huge unwieldy controller.  A lot of this comes from people that have never actually seen an Atari Jaguar in real life or even held the controller.  They simply see the key pad and make fun of it like it was a doofy fat kid with a bitchin sweet hair cut that dares to say "My Mom still cuts my hair."

Above: Future Sex Wizard.

So I'm compiling a list of other controllers that just don't give a fuck about working with human hands.  Controllers like:


#5 The Atari 7800

The Atari 7800 Controller.  This ugly joy stick has caused more hand cramps than a day home from junior high spent with a JC Penny catalogue, bottle of Jergins and box of super absorbent tissues.  You grip the shaft working the two red  buttons with a thumb and index finger allowing you to palm the massive nub cap in the opposite hand to work the joy stick.  It's as sick and awkward as it sounds.
Fun.  Probably?



#4 The Colecovision

The Colecovison is also no stranger to awkward controllers.  Held and operated in a similar fashion as the 7800 controller this input device had a numeric keypad complete with asterisk and pound sign for obvious reasons.  Youtube is rife with absolutely hilarious jokes about making collect or should I say Coleco calls!  The joystick part of this controller is a short little stump that knows size doesn't matter. 



#3 The Super Action Controller Set

Also for the Colecovision the Super Action Controller Set was designed with two games in mind.  It's gripped like a pistol with four buttons along the grip and the joystick and numeric keys on top of the controller.  Sure it's much more ergonomic but that thing looks like a hand held mixer.  I'm also pretty sure that it needs an adult with all of those hands molesting it from every direction.



#2 The Memorex VIS

The Memorex VIS is a very obscure system and equally terrible.  The controller itself feels all right in the hands but the standard wireless controllers simply do not work very well.  The input lag is unbearable and was somehow made with the laziest beams of infrared light. 

Picured:Lazy light.

Fortunately you can plug in any standard mouse or keyboard into the back of the system and keep this shit piece in a drawer where it belongs.  If you love how your 360 and Wii leave a path of defeated and drained double A batteries you will certainly love how this thing requires four triple A batteries.  Everyone always has spare triple A's sitting around, right?




#1 The Nintendo 64

Clearly not intended for human use the Nintendo 64 controller was designed with the tentacle monsters roaming Japan in mind.  Most games had gamers gripping onto the middle protrusion which always felt lop sided and asymmetrical.  Hidden on the bottom of the controller is a hole for you to jab many heavy and some times battery filled accessories into.  Again more triple A batteries which are always around the house when you need them.  In fact the game Mario Party 2 had a mini game that when played with this controller actually injured people causing Nintendo to send players a free glove to protect you from the evils of this peripheral.
It looked like this.  I guess.

9 comments:

The Devil Burning said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Devil Burning said...

A humorous and quite entertaining article JT. You should do one on retarded 3rd party controllers. I have at least 1 for the sega genesis that's retarded as fuck.

shaurz said...

I tried an Atari Jaguar controller and I thought it was quite nice. I didn't know it had a bad reputation. Sure, it has a big keypad but it doesn't get in the way.

Vlad Whyte said...

Hey, there's a reason the N64 had 3 handles! If 3D were to fail, you could still hold the N64 controller SNES style, why does everyone bash the darn thing : /

Sideshow said...

I never liked the N64 controller. Intellivision has a terrible controller similiar to the collecovision.

Anonymous said...

Atari Jaguar looks comfy to me, but it's not quite as nice as it looks. Nintendo 64 was fine.

TecmoBallz said...

LOLZ this had me a chuckelin'...I checked out this article after you mentioned it on mondocoolcast 61 or 62...Was thinking maybe you should do a quick little featurette on some of your old articles maybe before the emails or some shit...just something to get people to enjoy the entirity that mondocoolcast has to offer.

TecmoBallz said...

also the AAA battery thing really hit home, i just got off ebay before reading this getting a charging dock for both my wii and 360.

JerryTerrifying said...

@TecmoBallZ I actually have a box full of AA batteries so I'm usually cool on that front. What I don't have is a box of AAA batteries because almost nothing uses them.

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