Recently it seems like everyone in the gaming world wants to make a “pro controller” and sell it as an overpriced piece of plastic that has the same functionalities as an actual cheap piece of plastic. I mean yeah, it feels good in your hands, hell, I myself bought a controller from 8BitDo (I wish they were a sponsor) to get that nice retro premium feel while playing on my PC or Switch. But do we really need more of the same “pro controllers”?

I mean let’s be honest, we are all sick and tired of companies like Sony and Microsoft making these super high quality controllers that only work with their consoles, and they are selling them for like a hundred bucks. Now if you ask me, I would much rather prefer to have those companies working on the next Power Glove. Now THAT is a true pro controller.

All jokes aside, I was recently listening to a podcast where they talked about which is the best gaming controller. And you know it was mostly centered on the GameCube controller, the SteamDeck, those huge fighting sticks that Street Fighter fans carry around in conventions, but it got me thinking… What about those extremely janky game-specific controllers?

You know, where is the recognition for the GameCube’s Donkey Konga bongos or the crappy DDR mats, what about Guitar Hero or Rock Band with the drum set. Actually, let’s take it back even further, what about the Zap Gun for Duck Hunt for the NES?

ARCADE GUNS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

As some of you more educated folks out there know, gaming didn’t start with Minecraft and crappy flash games about doodle fights – although in our hearts it feels like it did. But the boom of video games started in a poorly lit place with dirty cool pattern carpets and a constant warm smell. And you may think “Hey, but how can a smell be warm?”, well if you don’t know how a smell can be warm and disgusting, then you either never played in the McDonalds playground or you’ve never gone to your local anime convention.

For one of those I’m sorry you didn’t have a childhood, but for the other one, I’m glad you haven’t been exposed to the horrors of local anime conventions.

But it is in those warm and poorly lit arcade halls that gaming really started to take off, and even back then arcade controllers were mostly the same, ya know? They would have the same layout: a joystick, the A and B buttons, and then an array of 2 to 5 buttons that you have no fucking clue what they actually do, but you still mash them from time to time depending on the game.

And for the most part all arcade games had this controller layout. It was known by arcade goers, it had a wide variety of uses and made it easier for new games to be placed in the existing arcade cabinets of older games. But then, around the 80s everything changed. Now it’s not much of a shock for us because we know better by now, but back then people didn’t see it coming… Japan got weird with its games.

In 1982 Disney released the Tron movie. You know the one with the shitty but stunning CGI (for the time) movie about dudes throwing glowing discs at each other to see who was the BEST DIGITAL GAMER (queue horn sound effect) and got to keep the girl. 

If you’ve never seen the original Tron movie, that’s pretty much what it’s about and honestly you’re not missing much. So just watch it with some friends and laugh at how weird and awkward it can be at times. But at the end of the day, this movie was a technological achievement by all accounts. It did things that one else had tried before, and it kinda did it okay for being a very tech and effects heavy movie in the 80s.

And with a movie talking about digital spaces and games, with the huge boom or arcades during that era, you know a video game had to be made. And in 1983, the ultimate Tron game arrived.

In 1982, along with the release of the movie, a more conventional Tron arcade game was released with several of the “games” depicted in the movie. More famously so, the “light bikes” game. But that arcade game still followed a bit of the conventional rules for controllers, it used a joystick that looked like a sci-fi drone controller or something, and it had a few buttons for moving around menus. What this arcade did for its future brother was the actual design of the cabinet itself.

Usually arcade cabinets only had custom art on the sides and the famous overhead title cards, you know those cool design things above the screen that let you know that the weird scrunched over dude that hasn’t moved from the machine in two hours is playing DigDug.

When the Discs of Tron arcade came out in 1983 it was one of the first arcades to have a semi booth like design. The arcade cabinet had an extended part that caged in the player while it was using the arcade, giving into the feel that they were actually in the Tron world. Or you know, some shit like that. But along with this more kind of personal approach to the machine itself, the developers got funky with its controller, leaning hard on the previously used “futuristic” controllers of the old Tron game.

And so, more and more arcades started to do this kind of thing of making their arcade cabinet unique and specific to the game they were making. This is the point where Japan started to get weird… cool, but weird.

Among many other things, Japan is best known for their love of arcades and video games. The arcade culture over in the country of the rising sun didn’t die with the rise of home consoles, on the contrary, people seem to prefer going to a physical space where they can go and play fun games with their friends, not being limited by the games they can buy for their Xbox.

Japan has thousands of arcades across the country with multiple companies still actively developing games for them, but the biggest boom of arcades – and most importantly for us right now, weird arcades – was during the late 80s and 90s.

First they started a bit more simple and chill with awesome games like Out Run with its steering wheel and gear changing joystick in 1986. Then games like Time Crisis and House of the Dead arrived with the awesome gun arcade design where instead of moving a dumb reticle with a joystick, you actually had a gun controller and pointed at the screen to shoot. Some of these gun arcades even have special mechanics or movements required to reload the guns.

And then, Japan wanted to get even weirder.

If you go to an arcade in Japan right now, you might find yourself stumbling upon one of the weirdest and most popular arcade games in Japan: Densha de Go!! An arcade game where you take the RIVETING role of a… train conductor. Yup you read that right, you play as a train conductor.

And you might be thinking “so are you like a futuristic train conductor? or are you escaping a zombie apocalypse??” to which I’ll say one more time… you are a train conductor. In modern Japan… just driving around a train and making stops for normal people in a digital game. And I don’t know why, but apparently people love it. Like for real, when I was living in Japan for a bit, this arcade machine was always occupied by some dude playing the game for hours while using a little conductor hat.

Japan has had some wacky ideas for arcades and I could talk about the arcade world for hours, so I might do that some other time. But for now, we’ll keep moving.

BE A TRAIN CONDUCTOR… AT HOME!

When home consoles like the Playstation, Xbox and GameCube started taking off, we need to remember that most of the big companies behind these consoles are from Japan. Both Nintendo and Sony are Japanese companies and most of their partner developers like Sega are also from the spanking arcade world (that’s an actual arcade, look it up). So when consoles like the PS2 and the GameCube started to get powerful and more popular, they saw the opportunity for the uniqueness of arcade games to reach the players at home.

The main player in this big era of arcadeyness of game consoles was Nintendo, with most of the weird controller games coming from them. I mean, they did try making the Power Glove in the 90s, so it didn’t come as a surprise.

And it’s this beautiful era that brought us games like the previously mentioned Donkey Konga (which actually had 3 titles developed), the multiple ports of DDR with one of them being the unbelievable Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix. And how can we forget the awesome Samba de Amigo maracas controller.

Of course some of the games that came out in this era are still going strong and being moved on to live in the arcades. Games like Guitar Hero, DDR and  of course, Samba de Amigo. But if these games were actually very well received and saw many versions and sequels published by their developers, why is it that nowadays we never see games with weird novelty controllers like the bongos of the king of the jungle?

Well the main issue might be the fact that it’s expensive to develop a controller that is only used for one game, let alone all the manufacturing costs and research that goes behind it. And also I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dig out your old copy of Guitar Hero and play for a bit at grandmas house, but most of those old controllers don’t work well anymore, and if you try to buy one online or at your local Best Buy, its either really expensive or near impossible to find one.

People did enjoy those games with special controllers like a guitar or a DDR mat that you could hook up to your Playstation, but after some intense use, sooner than later those novelty controllers and peripherals started to fail. And the companies behind the games didn’t make a lot of them to start with. While they constantly manufacture the basic controller, because there will always be accidents or rage throws against the wall, not a lot of people are going to look for a replacement of their bongos to play Donkey Konga. 

So slowly but surely, games with specific controllers or peripherals started to disappear. The companies behind the games either stopped making the controllers, the games themselves or they just moved it to an arcade space where it’s easier to give maintenance and tech support for those games. But if I’m honest with you, I miss having those weird controller games at home.

NOSTALGIA IS MY FAVORITE KIND OF DRUG

Some of the best gaming memories from my childhood are with Donkey Konga. The memories of when me and my sisters played Losing my religion by R.E.M with a doofy Donkey Kong slapping away at his bongos along with us are some of the best I have. And when our cousins, who also had Donkey Konga, came over and we were able to do the two-player songs with them, it was some of the most fun we had playing games.

While novelty controllers developed specifically for a single game might not be profitable or even viable as a product in the current day and age, I still yearn for the uniqueness of playing those very weird and specific games.

A couple weeks back I was able to go to a local arcade bar that had a lot of cool arcade machines, and playing some of those weird unique controller games reminded me of the joy of playing with something other than a pro controller or mouse and keyboard. There is something more satisfying and sort of toy-like aspect to playing a game with unique controllers. And that something tickles my lizard brain in all the right ways.

And yes, I am aware that some of this fun might come just from nostalgia, but if I’m being completely honest and rational, I don’t think that is the case here. Or at least not all of it. 

During this trip to the arcade bar I remembered how fun it is to watch other people play and be part of their gaming experience. While I saw long-time gamers like me playing their beloved arcade games, I also saw people with no gaming past playing these weird novelty games and having so much fun with it. It also reminded me of the time I worked at an arcade when I was in high school and seeing parents and normal ass highschool kids having a blast playing a weird arcade game together. So why the hell aren’t there more arcades?

Be it weird controllers, confusing menus that make you go “sure, just choose that one” or arcade machines that make you clumsily dance, I think games are the most fun when you can play with something more tangible that just a button on an Xbox controller; or share a fun memory with your friends trying to get better at the DDR machine, which only a few people seem to be able to master.

Even though all games nowadays seem to have an online multiplayer mode, have you noticed how games don’t have a split screen mode anymore? You know, aside from games like Mario Party or Mario Kart, which when you think about it, it seems like only Nintendo games keep trying to push the “get together and play” kind of mentality.

And look, I’m not saying that online multiplayer sucks or that I’m an “in person multiplayer” purist, but think back on the times that you played video games with your friends on the same console, throwing pillows to distract each other and screaming “hey don’t look at my screen!”. 

I think after the pandemic and being isolated for so long, now more than ever I miss those in-person gaming days, the visits to the arcade with my friends and the bongo showdowns with my cousins. Even though I’m sad about the slow disappearance of arcades in the west, all this is really just to say that we should give more love to weird controllers…

And that Nintendo should make a Donkey Konga 4 for the Switch.