Our favorite console had plenty accessories from many different manufacturers, some licensed and some other not. Let's take a short look to some of the licensed accessories for the system:
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| The box and the included goods |
Acclaim Wireless Controller for the NES is an infrared controller that supposedly gave you "wireless freedom". Yeah, right. You know the thing with most things infrared: Stay still or no reception. That was the case with Acclaim's Controllers. You should stay in front of the receiver without moving too much, or bye-bye reception. A nice collectors item but nothing more.
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| A pair of controllers with the receivers |
• NES Advantage
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| The NES Advantage Arcade Controller |
The NES Advantage is an arcade style controller for the NES, made by Nintendo. The controller is exceptional, giving the arcade feel and is equipped with turbo function for the A and B buttons and a turbo rate adjuster so you can adjust the turbo speed. The controller can be shared with another player by toggling the 1-2 player switch in games with alternate gameplay. Also the Advantage featured a slow function that made the game go slower, but it was not compatible with all games. In particular it just pressed the Start button really fast so the game would be paused and unpaused real quick, hence the slow speed.
• NES Four Score
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| The NES Four Score |
The NES Four Score is a 4 player adapter for the NES, made by Nintendo. The adapter has an option to switch between 2 and 4 player mode and also is equipped with a turbo function that gives all the controllers A, B or A&B buttons a turbo boost. The compatible games are: 8-Bit Xmas 2011, Bomberman II, Championship Bowling, Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat 2, Gauntlet II, Greg Norman's Golf Power, Harlem Globetrotters, Kings of the Beach, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, Monster Truck Rally, M.U.L.E., NES Play Action Football, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nintendo World Cup, R.C. Pro-Am II, Rackets & Rivals, Roundball: 2 on 2 Challenge, Spot, Smash TV, Super Off Road, Super Jeopardy!, Super Spike V' Ball, Swords and Serpents, Top Players' Tennis.
• Konami LaserScope
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| The LaserScope box and contents |
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| The LaserScope |
Konami LaserScope is in fact a voice activated, head-mounted light gun that was produced for one specific Konami Game the Laser Invasion, but it could be used with any light gun game. Each time you wanted to shoot you had to scream "Fire!" and aim with the laser guided crosshair that covered your eye. Most of the times the thing would fire at any background noise, rendering the games unplayable. It was connected through the audio port of the NES and you could also hear the game music from the headset.
• Bandai Mega
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| The Bandai Mega |
The Bandai Mega controller is a programmable unit officially licensed by Nintendo for the NES. It includes a built in LCD screen that displays the active functions, and a built in game.
At the built in LCD game you attempt to catch falling blocks with an on screen character. The blocks fall faster as you catch them.
• NES Max
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| The NES Max |
The NES Max was a one of its kind controller for its time, as it was the first one with "wings" as grips, like the ones on PlayStation and N64. It has turbo mode for the A and B buttons, but it fails to exceed the Advantage's maximum turbo rate. The Max also replaces the D-pad found on standard NES controllers with a small button-shaped pad called a cycloid. For more traditional control, the cycloid area is surrounded by an 8-way control pad ring.
• Miracle Piano
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| Miracle piano with box |
The Miracle Piano was a piano teaching tool that was released on multiple platforms including the NES. It consisted of a keyboard, connecting cables, power supply, soft foot pedals and the licensed NES cartridge. When connected to the console or computer, the user followed the on-screen notes. It was marketed as a tool to teach kids and to play the piano. It provided hundreds of lessons and was advertised as the perfect adjunct to normal lessons. Due to its high price ($500) and low sales, the keyboard with all of the original cables together are a rare find. Some of the NES Miracle keyboards were also later converted for PC use-the Nintendo Seal of Quality on these boards was covered up with a piece of plastic.
• The Power Glove
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| The Power Glove Box |
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| Contents of the box |
The Power Glove is one of the coolest looking NES accessories. That's it. This thing is pretty much useless. It was promoted like hell in the movie Wizard and every kid wanted it back then. But when you hooked it up the NES, it was a bitter disappointment. The controls were bulky and rendered pretty much everything unplayable. Even its own game, Super Glove Ball wasn't playable with this thing.
The glove has traditional NES controller buttons on the forearm as well as a program button and buttons labeled 0-9. A person presses the program button and a numbered button to input commands, such as changing the firing rate of the A and B buttons. Along with the controller, the player can perform various hand motions to control a character on-screen.
The flex sensors in the Power Glove are a carbon-based ink on plastic. Bending the flex sensors causes the carbon to compress, decreasing the resistance. The sensors in the DataGlove are based on optical fibers that are scratched near the bending joint to cause it to transmit less light when bent, an innovation developed by Young L. Harvill of VPL Research. There are two ultrasonic speakers (transmitters) in the glove and three ultrasonic microphones (receivers) around the TV monitor. The ultrasonic speakers take turns transmitting a short burst (a few pulses) of 40 kHz sound and the system measures the time it takes for the sound to reach the microphones. A triangulation calculation is performed to determine the X, Y, Z location of each of the two speakers, which specifies the yaw and roll of the hand. The only dimension it cannot calculate is the pitch of the hand, since the hand can pitch without moving the location of the two ultrasonic speakers.
The Power Glove is based on the patented technology of the VPL Dataglove, but with many modifications that allow it to be used with slow hardware and sold at an affordable price. Whereas the Dataglove can detect yaw, pitch and roll, uses fiber optic sensors to detect finger flexure and has a resolution of 256 positions (8 bits) per finger for four fingers (the little finger is not measured to save money, for it usually follows the movement of the ring finger), the Power Glove can only detect roll, and uses sensors coated with conductive ink yielding a resolution of four positions (2 bits) per finger for four fingers. This allows the Power Glove to store all the finger flexure information in a single byte. However, it appears that the fingers actually feed an analog signal to the microprocessor on the Power Glove. The microprocessor converts the analog signal into two bits per finger.
Nice thing to have if you collect, but that's it. Just hang it on the wall.
• Power Pad
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| Power Pad side A |
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| Power Pad Side B |
The Power Pad is a pretty nice controller for the NES. It's a mat with pressure points that is used to interact with the game. The software must support the Power Pad to use it. It has two sides with different controls on each one.
• Zapper
This accessory needs no introduction. We all played with it. It's the NES's light gun and is used to shoot items on screen. Come on you remember Duck Hunt...
And last but not least,
• R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy)
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| The Robotic Operated Buddy |
ROB the Robot was a weird piece of machinery. It is only supported by 2 games, Gyromite and Stack Up. R.O.B. receives commands via optical flashes in the screen. Once it lights up, it is ready to receive six commands. Just like the NES Zapper, R.O.B. only functions correctly when coupled with a CRT (Cathode ray) type television. All the Robot series games include a test feature that sends an optical flash that should make R.O.B.'s LED light up. See the following video to understand how it works, as words can hardly describe it...
These and some more that I might not be aware of, are the NES licensed accessories. But there are a big number of unlicensed ones that we'll take a look on another review.
-NES Cat
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