We remember consoles by their headline games, but hardware add-ons often supplied the stories: the first controller that kicked back, a memory card you carried like a tiny handheld, or the plastic instrument that took over the living room for one glorious winter.
Rumble made games physical
Force feedback now feels ordinary, yet the N64 Rumble Pak made it an event. It clipped into the controller and demanded its own batteries, adding weight as well as vibration. Later controllers built the motors in, but the add-on’s importance was larger than its list of compatible games: it changed what players expected to feel.
Because accessories were optional, developers had to support a useful fallback. That constraint often produced thoughtful settings—an idea modern accessibility design can appreciate.
Memory cards became toys of their own
Sega’s Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit placed a screen and controls inside a memory card. Games could display status information on the controller, exchange small activities or send the unit away as a miniature handheld. The battery life was famously demanding, but the idea made saved data feel tangible.
Sony’s PocketStation explored similar territory in Japan, while ordinary memory cards became collectable in colours, capacities and branded editions. Today, ageing flash memory and counterfeit high-capacity cards make condition and provenance important.
Cameras and microphones moved the player on screen
The Game Boy Camera turned a monochrome handheld into a tiny creative studio. EyeToy used a television-mounted camera to place silhouettes and gestures into PlayStation 2 games. Microphones powered karaoke, rhythm experiments and voice-driven novelties long before voice chat became routine.
These devices were technically modest, but they changed who watched. A camera game makes the room part of the performance; karaoke makes the audience part of the score.
The magnificent age of single-purpose controllers
Fishing rods
Reels, motion sensors and improbable arcade confidence turned one genre into a physical routine.
Dance mats
They made rhythm visible, social and exhausting—and folded away just badly enough to remain memorable.
Maracas and bongos
Plastic instruments gave music games a character no standard controller could imitate.
Multitaps
Before four ports became common, these small adaptors decided whether a party game could actually become a party.
Why accessories disappear first
Peripherals are bulky, easy to separate from their boxes and often useful with only a handful of games. Cables vanish, battery compartments corrode and families keep the console while donating the strange plastic object in the cupboard. That makes a complete accessory increasingly interesting even when the underlying electronics are simple.
How to collect them sensibly
- Start with a game you genuinely want to play, then buy the accessory it needs.
- Check that receivers, dongles, straps, pedals, microphones and proprietary leads are included.
- Inspect battery compartments before powering anything on.
- Confirm region and console revision compatibility.
- Be realistic about space: boxed rhythm hardware can dominate a collection.
The preservation problem
An emulated game can preserve code and artwork while losing the physical joke at its centre. A fishing game mapped to a normal pad may run perfectly, but it no longer asks you to cast across the room. Preserving those experiences means documenting the hardware, repairing it safely and supporting modern adaptors that let old controllers talk to new systems.
That is why the odd accessories deserve shelf space. They reveal what each console maker thought the future might feel like—and sometimes the failed future is more interesting than the one that won.