The best video game controllers are the ones you don’t even think about. They let you fully immerse yourself in the game and let you forget you’re even holding them. The best controllers today all follow a mostly standard design, but in the early console generations, each system took a completely unique approach. In fact, many consoles would experiment with multiple types of controllers of various shapes, sizes, and input methods. Most of them were bad, and there were a few that were even painful. No matter how amazing the game was to play or how great the graphics were, a bad controller would completely tank the experience. Looking back from the days of the NES up to the PS5, we’ve recalled the very worst video game controllers of all time.
Dreamcast controller
We’re starting off with a tame one here before working our way up. The Dreamcast controller looks fairly standard for the time — it has an analog stick, D-pad, triggers, and four face buttons. The problem with it is everything else. This thing is somehow bulkier and less comfortable to hold than the original Xbox’s Duke controller but made worse because the cable comes out of the bottom rather than the back or top. This made it awkward to handle for any length of time, and even the D-pad and buttons were hard on the thumbs. It wasn’t bad enough to cause the console to die the early death it did, but it by no means helped.
Power Glove
The NES controller was amazing for its time, but Nintendo has never been a company to rest on its laurels. There were plenty of peripherals for the NES, but none quite as bad as the Power Glove. In truth, Nintendo was just a few decades early with the idea of motion controls as we would see with the smash hit of the Wii. Back in the early ’90s, however, the technology was nowhere near advanced enough to work. You’d be lucky if the game recognized even half your inputs moving this thing around, but it was also a huge pain to even get set up since it required you to type in long codes for each game. Using this was an exercise in frustration that only made it harder to enjoy your games. It did look cool, but that’s about the only positive we can say about it.
Atari Jaguar Pro controller
The Atari Jaguar Pro controller is proof that more isn’t better. Games were getting more sophisticated and required more than the typical two to four buttons most controllers had come with up to this point. Somehow this abomination isn’t even Atari’s worst controller since it at least has a D-pad and three buttons you can press without moving your hands. How Atari expected us to use an entire num pad while playing is a mystery we may never solve. Even ignoring how impractical the entire bottom section is, the “good” part isn’t even made well. holding the controller at the top is awkward and hard to get a grip on, plus the buttons and D-pad are mushy and hard to actually press correctly. Thankfully not many people got a Jaguar and had to be subjected to this monstrosity.
SEGA Activator
Remember how we said the Power Glove was ahead of its time? Well, Sega somehow thought that it could make full body tracking work in the early ’90s. The Activator was an octagon that you placed on the ground and used to control a game, or that was the concept, anyway. In practice, it forced you to memorize a completely new “control” scheme based on which sensor you moved over. For example, to pause the game you would need to move over panels 4 and 6 at the same time. So, once you knew what button you wanted to press you would then have to translate that into what panel that represented on the Activator, remember where that panel is, and then move your body over it. Oh, and pray that it reads you at all. That last part failed more often than it worked, making the entire struggle pointless.
Atari 5200 controller
Sorry, Atari, but your controllers are terrible. Unlike most other controllers we mention, Atari’s worst ones are the default options, and the 5200 controller is the worst. This thing looks like a TV remote with an awkward joystick at the top. The entire layout feels like it wasn’t designed for human hands, let alone comfort. There was no way to hold the device, use the joystick, and press any of the buttons at the same time. It fails in every aspect of a controller without even talking about how stiff and unreliable the joystick is. The only notable thing this controller brought to the table was a dedicated pause button, but that alone isn’t worth much praise.
Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw controller
The GameCube and PS2 had fantastic controllers with no need for any major changes. However, this was the era where third-party and novelty controllers started flooding the market. Of all the experimental controllers we’ve seen, none can compete with the chainsaw controller released alongside Resident Evil 4. Instead of making some kind of lightgun controller, Capcom thought the best form factor for a controller would be a bulky chainsaw. The result is worse than whatever you had in your mind. Besides just being big and bulky, it is wildly impracticable. There’s no way to hold this thing and have access to all the buttons and sticks at once. The only way you could sort of make it work is to use it on a table like some kind of arcade stick, but even that is hard on your wrists with how the sticks are placed. Hopefully, anyone who purchased this only wanted it for display purposes because it is absolutely useless as a controller.
Tony Hawk: RIDE Skateboard controller
It’s one thing for a controller to be uncomfortable, and another for it to not function, but this “controller” is so much worse. Designed only for Tony Hawk: RIDE, this skateboard controller takes things to a new level by being actually dangerous to use. Speeding up requires you to slide your foot along the side, mimicking the motion of pushing a skateboard, but pulling off tricks actually requires you to lift and tilt the board around. Leaning back to do a manual, as one example, can easily end up with you flat on your back. This was during the height of Guitar Hero which popularized gimmick controllers like this, but thankfully RIDE was a bomb, and not that many people purchased this death trap.
