Peripherals

The accessories, add-ons, and gadgets of the retro era

NES Zapper
Nintendo · 1985 · Nintendo Entertainment System
The Zapper succeeded completely as a first-party accessory — it was cheap to manufacture, bundled effectively with one of the platform's most popular games, and defined the light gun genre for the console era.

The NES Zapper was Nintendo's light gun accessory for the NES, bundled with the original console in North America and best known for Duck Hunt, one of the best-selling games of the decade.
Power Glove
Mattel / Nintendo · 1989 · Nintendo Entertainment System
The Power Glove failed as a functional controller but succeeded as a cultural object, demonstrating consumer appetite for motion control that Nintendo would not satisfactorily address until the Wii seventeen years later.

The Power Glove was a motion-sensing wrist controller for the NES designed to be worn like a glove, marketed aggressively as the future of game control — and remembered as one of the most poorly functional accessories ever produced for a major platform.
R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy)
Nintendo · 1985 · Nintendo Entertainment System / Famicom
R.O.B. failed as a functional game peripheral but succeeded completely as a marketing device, giving Nintendo the retail positioning it needed to re-enter the North American market after the 1983 crash.

R.O.B. was a plastic robot peripheral bundled with the NES Deluxe Set, designed to help Nintendo position the NES as a toy rather than a video game console in a retail market burned by the 1983 crash.
NES Advantage
Nintendo · 1987 · Nintendo Entertainment System
The NES Advantage succeeded as a premium first-party accessory, offering genuine build quality and useful features that justified its price for players with serious interest in the NES arcade library.

The NES Advantage was Nintendo's first-party arcade stick for the NES, bringing an 8-way joystick, large face buttons, and a turbo fire switch to home players who wanted an experience closer to their favourite coin-operated machines.
Super Scope
Nintendo · 1992 · Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Scope achieved modest commercial success on the strength of the platform's install base but failed to establish itself as a meaningful part of the SNES experience due to a thin game library and its impractical physical size.

The Super Scope was Nintendo's wireless light gun bazooka for the SNES — a shoulder-mounted, infrared-based successor to the NES Zapper that required six AA batteries and worked with a modest library of dedicated games.
Game Genie
Codemasters / Galoob · 1990 · NES / SNES / Genesis / Game Boy
The Game Genie was a commercial success that sold millions of units across multiple platforms, and its legal victory against Nintendo established a meaningful fair use precedent for game modification that continues to be cited.

The Game Genie was a pass-through cartridge cheat device that allowed players to enter codes modifying game values in real time, enabling infinite lives, invincibility, and other modifications in thousands of games without any ROM modification.
Sega 32X
Sega · 1994 · Sega Genesis / Mega Drive
The 32X failed catastrophically, abandoned by Sega within 14 months, and became the definitive symbol of the company's mid-1990s strategic incoherence — simultaneously launching with the Saturn it was meant to complement rather than compete against.

The Sega 32X was an add-on unit that connected to the Genesis cartridge port and added two 32-bit SH-2 processors and enhanced graphics capability, intended as a stopgap 32-bit upgrade while the Saturn was developed — and remembered as one of gaming's greatest strategic miscalculations.
Sega Activator
Sega · 1993 · Sega Genesis
The Sega Activator was a near-total commercial failure that correctly identified the consumer appeal of motion-based control but applied that concept to a game library and hardware design entirely unsuited to it.

The Sega Activator was an octagonal infrared ring controller placed on the floor, designed to translate full-body movement into game inputs — a concept that predated motion gaming by fifteen years but was fundamentally unsuited to the games of its era.
Menacer
Sega · 1992 · Sega Genesis
The Menacer was a competent light gun that sold moderately but never built the game library or cultural presence needed to distinguish itself from the Super Scope it was designed to compete with.

The Menacer was Sega's wireless infrared light gun for the Genesis, launched to compete with Nintendo's Super Scope and offering a modular design that could be assembled as a full rifle or used as a compact pistol.
Multitap
Hudson Soft / Sony · 1993 · Super Nintendo / PlayStation
The Multitap succeeded as an essential accessory on multiple platforms, enabling the four-player party games that defined the social gaming culture of the 1990s and driving meaningful attach rate revenue.

The Multitap was a multi-port adapter allowing up to four or five players to connect simultaneously to a single console, enabling the multiplayer party games that became a defining feature of the SNES and PlayStation eras.
Atari Driving Controller
Atari · 1977 · Atari 2600
The Atari Driving Controller succeeded as a well-designed specialist peripheral that correctly identified the need for analogue steering input decades before the industry standardised it, though its narrow game compatibility limited its reach beyond the pack-in title.

The Atari Driving Controller was a dedicated paddle-style dial controller bundled with Indy 500 for the Atari 2600, using a rotary encoder to provide 360-degree analogue steering input decades before analogue sticks became standard.
Vectrex
General Consumer Electronics / Milton Bradley · 1982 · Vectrex (standalone system)
The Vectrex was a technically remarkable system that succeeded as an engineering achievement but was commercially destroyed by the 1983 crash rather than any fault of its own design, and its collector following today is the strongest of any pre-NES platform.

The Vectrex was a unique all-in-one home gaming unit with a built-in vector display monitor, producing crisp, geometric graphics unlike any other home system and avoiding the colour and resolution limitations of television output entirely.