The Joy of Sticks

A non-technical journal of gamepads and other input devices I think are cool.

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A special controller released with Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style for the PS1.

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The Hal Laboratory Joyball for the Famicom.

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ONLY AMIIIIGA

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The Turbo Touch 360, SNES version

The Turbo Touch dude, SNES version

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The Turbo Touch 360, Genesis version

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The Score Master, another joystick for the SNES released only in Europe (if I'm wrong someone yell at me). Look at all that space upon which to rest my freakish American forearms. And what a sexy button layout.

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The Super Advantage, the successor of the NES Joystick of the same name.

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The Konix Speedking, "the world's first high performance joystick."

The Speedking was a micro-switched joystick designed for use with pretty much every home PC system available in Britain (I'm guessing, I don't know much about those old 80's PCs), and came in both a right and left handed version. With a 1 year guarantee and an anonymous gloved hand beckoning you to enjoy its red-hot contents, I'd probably have asked my parents to buy one of these for me if I saw this ad in a magazine. 

Ultimately the Wales headquartered Konix sold off their peripheral division to Spectravision in 1990 in order to continue funding their console, the Multi System, but their efforts did not bear fruit or iguana vegetables. Flare Technology, who Konix had partnered with to develop the Multi System, went on to design the Flare II, later purchased by Atari and released as the Jaguar.

Read more about the Konix Multisystem here.

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  I love audacious and ridiculous controllers. Meet the AlphaGrip, a continent of buttons and switches that aims to serve the function of a keyboard and mouse via the form factor of a gamepad. That's right, with only 30-60 hours of practice (the average time it takes for a new user to learn to use the AlphaGrip, according to AlphaGrip's inventor, Mike Willner) you too can

type 50+ wpm from any location

be comfortable and productive

relax while working or gaming 

spend as much or more time learning to use a handheld keyboard as you would earning a recreational pilot's license.

And don't forget the expansion ports. You can even... plug in a keyboard? I don't know man, look. I kind of want one of these things, to be honest. I can't even make fun of it anymore. Look at all those buttons.

The official AlphaGrip website. 

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The gamepad included with the Neo Geo CD.

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The pad included with the Amiga CD32.

A quote from the thesonicreblog.com, where I found this image:

With the introduction of the CD32, however, the Amiga did get a standardized 6-button controller which works with many late-amiga games, and is only compatible with the Amiga (i.e. you can’t use it on a genesis). Unfortunately, it’s pretty much trash.