The Glade 4.0

Every so often there is a controller that comes out that makes you wonder just WTF the creator was smoking at the time, or what exec okayed the design.

Here are mine:


^^^(Thank God this didn't see the light of day.)


^^^(What in the holy living hell?)


^^^(Did someone drop a bowling ball on the soft plastic mold of this thing, and the designer stopped and thought, "Hmmm, we're on to something here.")

That bottom one is a one handed keyboard. They make em in lefty and righty.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Still, why would they put the big depression in there? Why not make it more flat, if not more compact?

That second controller has a bunch of buttons that I didn't read as "shift" on the first pass.

_________________

Ergonomics

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Also, curling up the top rows gives your fingers more reach. Consider that the right-most part is like 8 keys "tall". Normal keyboards are 5 rows.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

1 handed keyboard? The ultimate porn-controller?



Hey man, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

_________________
Ron Paul 2012

Actually designed so that those who have lost a hand can use a keyboard relatively easily, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

_________________
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

you're right, i'd rather jerk off than lose a hand

_________________
Ron Paul 2012

You could always get an Xbox car:

Yeah...I remember the pics of that piece of **** when the PS3 was first announced, and thinking "If that's the PS3 controller, I won't be purchasing a PS3, ever."

My second thought was "Damn, there's going to be one hell of a second-part controller market for the PS3."

Why no love for the boomerang?

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

To me it looks like you would not have enough ability to move your fingers quickly to the face buttons, because you were grasping so much of the "rang" part of the controller.

I honestly can't say that this is the case, of course, as the controller never came out.

But it just seems like everything is too spread out for use in games that require fast button presses.

EDIT: Also, it's a matter of aesthetics. The "rangs" are just too long. If they would have but the length of them in half and closed the distance gap between the face buttons just a tad, I actually think it would have been a nice-looking controller.

I've never heard of this, but apparently the mother-of-all-stupid-controllers is one from a game called Steel Battalions. This article on Wired kind of describes it (40 buttons?!), but I didn't get a good image of what it looked like.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Ah yes, Steel Battalion. Was like $140 (when I bought it, it originally was $200), but it came with the mother of all controllers.

I owned it briefly. It was just too bulky to really play as much as a normal game.

Oh ... that's the controller?! Crap, I saw that in the pics in the Wired story, but I thought it was a keyboard of some kind. Holy cow. Actually looks geeky and offbeat enought that I'd probably enjoy it.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

The controller itself was pretty cool -- had some neat features and interfaced with the game well. You really need to play it at a desk or prop up a small tables to get the full effect of it. I ended up putting it my lap a lot, which got tiresome.

The problem was more of the game itself. It was pretty tough, and unforgiving. Like if you hit the eject button -- the game was over for good, and you had to restart from the beginning.

Permadeath!

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Yep, and it's the main reason that ultimately led me to trade it it.

Yeah, I regret not hunting down a copy of Steel Battalion. It'd be fun to try.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How about every accessory/attachment for the Wii mote?

_________________

I still have my copy of Steel Battalion, it was just too geekawesome to sell. The game was TOUGH though. That permadeath was insane. I played the first couple levels WAY MORE than the rest of the game.

I don't know. The ones I found at the everything's a dollar store were cute in a sad, pathetic way.

_________________

Yes. The Sony Wiimote and Anal Probe.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

The only ones I've actually seen (nunchuck, SNES controller, and steering wheel thing) work rather well.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.