Video Game Reviews

The Weird, Wonderful and Completely Bonkers World of Gaming Accessories

17/7/2026

Blog post by Heather from @GameOlderPodcast

Controllers are only the beginning.

For decades, console manufacturers and third-party companies have been convinced they could make gaming more immersive with an endless stream of accessories. Sometimes they struck gold. Sometimes they created genuine innovations years ahead of their time. Sometimes… they gave us a baby doll with a Wii Remote shoved in its back.

From brilliant hardware upgrades to bizarre plastic gimmicks, gaming history is packed with accessories that made us laugh, scratch our heads and, occasionally, wonder if someone had completely lost the plot. Here are some of the strangest, smartest and most unforgettable gaming accessories ever released.

Babysitting Mama: The Accessory Nobody Asked For

Let’s start with one of the most baffling ideas in gaming history.

Babysitting Mama on the Wii came packaged with a plush baby doll that held the Wii Remote inside its back. Players rocked it to sleep, burped it, fed it and generally pretended to look after a baby. The Wii Remote even played crying baby noises through its speaker. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, Nintendo actually had to remind players not to shake the baby. It’s one of those accessories that makes you wonder who exactly approved the idea. Was it a game? A toy? A parenting simulator? Either way, it’s difficult to imagine many players choosing this over another round of Mario Kart. Ironically, it also became one of the final games released for the Wii. Quite the way for a console to bow out.

Feeling Every Explosion

If Babysitting Mama represented gaming at its strangest, other accessories were trying to push the medium forward.

Long before VR became fashionable, companies were already experimenting with wearable gaming. The Aura Interactor in 1994 and, later, the Novint Rumble Vest promised to let players feel every punch, explosion and gunshot through vibrating pads built into a wearable vest. Get shot in-game and the vest responded exactly where the impact landed. For the time, it genuinely felt futuristic. The only downside? It chewed through batteries faster than most people could afford.

Even so, it’s surprising the idea never became mainstream. Pair modern wireless technology with today’s VR headsets and rumble vests suddenly don’t seem so ridiculous anymore.

The Accessory That Became… Something Else

Of course, not every ambitious idea was remembered for its intended purpose. The PlayStation 2’s Rez came with one of gaming’s most infamous accessories. Officially called the Trance Vibrator, it was designed purely to enhance the music by vibrating in sync with the game. Players could place it under a chair, under their legs or simply hold it while playing. Naturally, the internet had other ideas. It quickly gained an entirely different reputation that probably wasn’t discussed in Sony’s board meetings. Gaming history is full of accidental legends, and this is certainly one of them.

Wii Sports and the Age of Plastic

No console embraced accessories quite like the Nintendo Wii. The system itself was revolutionary. The mountain of plastic that followed? Less so. Tennis rackets. Golf clubs. Baseball bats. Fishing rods.

Nearly every Wii owner seemed to end up with a box full of plastic shells that did absolutely nothing except make the controller resemble something else.

Unlike the Wii Wheel, which genuinely made racing games feel more intuitive, most of these accessories added precisely zero functionality.

Years later, they’re still cluttering up Facebook Marketplace listings across the country.

Nintendo’s Secret Hardware Upgrade

Thankfully, not every accessory relied on novelty. The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak quietly doubled the console’s RAM from 4MB to a whopping 8MB. That doesn’t sound impressive today, but in the late ’90s it was a significant upgrade.

Games like Perfect Dark unlocked additional multiplayer modes and features, while Donkey Kong 64 famously shipped with the Expansion Pak because it solved a major technical issue.

It’s fascinating because Nintendo effectively gave players a hardware upgrade without asking them to buy a brand-new console.

Imagine Sony or Microsoft releasing an official performance upgrade today that simply clipped into the machine. It’s an elegant idea that never really returned.

Bringing the Arcade Home

Some accessories weren’t about adding features—they were about recreating experiences. For many gamers, nothing captured the magic of the arcade quite like light guns.

The Namco GunCon transformed games like Time Crisis, Point Blank and House of the Dead into genuine home arcade experiences. There was something uniquely satisfying about pointing a plastic gun at your television and having it work flawlessly.

Sadly, the move away from CRT televisions effectively killed the technology, although modern recreations are finally bringing light-gun gaming back for newer displays. Sometimes older technology really did things we still miss today.

The Dreamcast That Wanted You to Sing...

If any company deserves an award for fearless experimentation, it’s Sega. The Dreamcast Karaoke Unit connected underneath the console and transformed it into a fully fledged karaoke machine. It even connected online, giving players access to an enormous catalogue of Japanese and Western songs.

Today it’s mostly a fascinating collector’s item because the online service disappeared years ago. Even so, it perfectly captures Sega’s willingness to try ideas nobody else would even attempt.

When Controllers Became Science Projects

Not every experiment was a success. The ’90s were filled with manufacturers convinced they could reinvent the controller. Some looked more like flight simulators than gaming peripherals. Others resembled something NASA might accidentally leave behind. Most were expensive. Most reviewed terribly. Almost all disappeared without a trace.

Yet they’re brilliant reminders that gaming companies were once willing to take enormous creative risks instead of simply releasing another slightly different controller every few years.

The PlayStation Portal Shows Simplicity Still Wins

Modern accessories, by comparison, often take a very different approach. The PlayStation Portal proves that not every accessory needs to reinvent gaming. Remote Play has existed for years, but giving players a comfortable handheld with a large screen, DualSense features and adaptive triggers suddenly made it feel genuinely useful. It’s not trying to change gaming. It’s simply making it easier to play your PS5 wherever you are. Sometimes that’s all an accessory needs to do.

The Best Accessories Do More Than Sell Plastic

Looking back, gaming accessories tell the story of an industry that has never stopped experimenting. Some were laughably bad. Some were brilliant ideas released before the technology was ready. Some genuinely changed how we played.

Whether it’s a vibrating vest, an expandable Nintendo 64, a karaoke Dreamcast or a baby doll nobody can quite explain, these odd inventions are just as much a part of gaming history as the consoles themselves. Because every now and then, hidden amongst the gimmicks and the plastic, somebody accidentally invents the future.

Blog post by Heather from @GameOlderPodcast

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