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Ridiculous Handheld Peripherals
Written by Philip Jones on Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Consoles have had some pretty dumb add-ons, including nerf Wii tennis rackets and cooling fans that overheat Xbox's, but portables have it even worse. Trust us...
...Continued From Page 1 Grips
What's with these!? They look like someone, somewhere decided it would be a great idea to glue the design of a Playstation controller onto your handheld. Maybe some people find them comfortable, but you can't deny that they just look utterly insane. What's even more disturbing though, is one particular grip for the GBA, combining grip, light and joystick add-on.
This thing is enough to give you nightmares:
PSP on TV
Surely playing your PSP on your TV is quite a pointless exercise? Seeing as if you've got a PS2 already, ain't most of the games the same? ( Oooooooh, controversial!). Well, there's actually a few cases where it'd be nice to play your PSP games on the big screen, say RPG's, where you would otherwise be spending a long time staring at your small screen. Early on in the PSP's life there was much rumor and speculation that someone was about to let loose an ingenious device that plugged into your PSP and outputted a signal direct to your TV. What we actually got though, was this...
This monstrous contraption is just one of what was unleashed upon us as a PSP to TV converter. Essentially, it appears to be a webcam in a black plastic container, stuck onto the screen! Unlike the PSP2TV mod, which actually requires taking your PSP apart to install it, this device simply points a camera at your PSP's screen, then sends it down the connected cables straight into your TV. Sounds cool? Well, the picture quality is let's say, a little on the underwhelming side. The fact that you have to actually play your PSP with the thing attached to it? I think I'll stick to staring at the small screen thanks.
Konami Hyper Boy
Thought I'd save the most ridiculous til last. I only ever saw one of these once. A guy I knew brought it into school to impress us all. At the time, we all thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Looking back, it seems to be the most insane peripheral ever created for a portable system. I think you can see from the pictures exactly what it's supposed to be.
As you can see, the unit is pretty much a magnifier, light, amplifier and fancy joystick all in one immense unit. It was very well built, nice and sturdy. I should expect so too seeing how expensive it was at the time. Just check out that joystick, that's craftsmanship I tell ya! The Game Boy itself fits snugly inside the unit, almost disappearing completely into the murky plastic abyss. The only problem was that with the combination of light and audio, the thing chewed through batteries pretty damn quick. So you often ended up just playing a darkened, magnified screen with a big joystick. Not exactly exciting. Indeed the machine looked impressive to us kids at the time but really, it wasn't portable, it consumed valuable batteries, you would use it maybe for a few hours every now and then but it soon enough found itself languishing in a drawer or under a bed.
As you can see, companies will push out all kinds of bizarre garbage in order to lighten our wallets. If you think they're cool, go ahead and buy 'em. Just don't come crying to me when you've burst your pockets wide open 'cos you tried stuffing that Konami Hyper Boy in your pants.
posted February 16, 2007