Nintendo · 1987 · Nintendo Entertainment System
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.
The NES Advantage arrived in 1987 at a time when the NES's game library had grown substantially toward arcade conversions — Contra, Commando, Ikari Warriors, Trojan — that were far more comfortable to play with a joystick than a d-pad. Nintendo's design was substantial and well-constructed: a large octagonal-gated joystick, two oversized red action buttons, and a horizontal layout reminiscent of a tabletop arcade control panel. The peripheral weighed significantly more than a standard NES controller and was designed to be placed on a flat surface during play rather than held in the hands. The Advantage's two most significant features were its turbo switches and its slow-motion function. Dedicated A and B turbo toggles allowed rapid fire to be engaged for each button independently, a capability that was critically useful in bullet-heavy shooters like Life Force and Gradius. The slow-motion feature — achieved by rapidly toggling the console's pause signal — worked across all NES games without requiring any software support, making it a genuinely universal accessibility tool at a time when difficulty was rarely adjustable. These features made the Advantage popular among players who wanted a competitive edge in arcade-style games. The Advantage was a premium product at approximately $49.99 — more than the standard NES controller — but sold well throughout the NES's commercial life. Its build quality was markedly superior to many third-party arcade sticks of the period, which used cheaper switches and looser joystick gates that degraded rapidly with use. The Advantage's joystick used reliable microswitches that retained their action across years of play. Nintendo followed it with the NES Max (1988), a more compact turbo controller, and the Super NES had its own equivalent in the SNES Advantage, though neither achieved the original's cultural footprint. For a generation of players who had spent time at arcades and wanted that physical experience translated to their living rooms, the Advantage was the defining NES accessory. Its distinctive silhouette — two big red buttons flanking a black joystick on a grey base — is immediately recognisable to anyone who grew up with the NES, and working examples are still sought by collectors who prefer joystick control for the platform's extensive arcade conversion library.