Top 10 unique game controllers

4 - Dance Mat

Various systems from the Atari 2600 onwards
1982 – Present

Foot orientated controllers have been around almost as long as home consoles themselves. The Exus Foot Craz is probably the earliest example of a foot-driven controller. Built for the Atari 2600 in the early 80s, the Foot Craz was paired with the dull-sounding Video Jogger. By the mid 80s, Bandai and Nintendo had developed a version called the Power Pad for the NES that was compatible with dancing as well as fitness games. However, it was on the PlayStation, and in conjunction with Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution games that the dance mat reached critical mass.

Reducing such a romanticised and artistic form of physical expression as dancing to a sequence of arrows seems a little vulgar and uncouth. However what happens on screen and with a dance mat bears little relation to real dance: far from being simulations or bastardized versions of dance, the media-filtered, game-structured vision of dancing presented by dance mat games is something new and unique.

3 - Red Octane Guitar

For use with Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2
Sony PlayStation 2, 2005 - 2006

Guitar Hero is probably the best of the actual games in this list. Packed full of detail and humour, it’s obviously a labour of love, and represents everything good about games developed by independent studios who are passionate about their product. The reason it doesn’t come higher up the list is that while well executed, there is something obvious about being a guitar hero, and designing your own controller is a golden opportunity to do something different. That, and Guitar Hero didn’t feature any Guns n’ Roses songs – something that Guitar Hero 2 is fortunately set to remedy.