As a company, Nintendo has never been afraid to veer away from the status quo and try a little something different. When Sony and Microsoft were engaged in an arms race to develop the fastest and most powerful gaming systems of their generations, Nintendo was happily chilling in the background working out how many characters it could fit into the next incarnation of Super Smash Brothers (spoile🧸r alert: there 🅷is no such thing as too many.)

Often this de꧒viation has been good for the company. Instead of competing with the two console giants, Nintendo has taken a very valuable market share by appealing to casual and family gamers. Consoles like the Wii and the Switch are just so far away from the Xbox and PlayStation model that it is hard to even consider them part of the same electronics subdivision.

However, sometimes this deviation backfire✃s. And when it backfires, it backfires in a big, big way.

That is how the company has been part of some of the biggest gaming missteps this side of E.T. on the At⛄ari. It sometimes seems like the creative thinkers within the walls of Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters are playing a game of one-upmans💎hip when it comes to designing the most truly out there peripherals.

It is as if the company has decided that a regular control pad is either too mainstream or too boring for their taste. After all, why go against decades of console knowledge and controღl a game with your hands when you can do so in so many other ridiculous, and often embarrassing, ways.

15 ও Speedboard 🍸

Many of Nintendo's most bizarre peripherals failed because they were before their time. This, ♕however, is not true about the Speedboard, it failed because it was a heaping pile of garbage as a concept.

Video game players get a bad rap for being lazy. The Speedboard seemed to be designed to give people with that mindset more ammunition, as the consumer is essentially paying for an ugly piece of plasti🦩c that does nothing more than hold their controller for them. It was pushed as a revolutionary device that would allow for higher scores and quicker reaction times, yet it was no different to simply placing your control pad on a table and hacking away at the buttons.

This NES accessory bombed and it was quickly ꦫ(and quietly) discontinued a couple of months after its initial release.

14 𝔍 Kona💦mi LaserScope

The LaserScope was a🦄 peripheral that was doomed from the very beginning because it was aiming for a market that had zero interest 𓂃in buying it.

The fun aspect of light gun games is in the shooting. It is found in the holdi🍌ng of the gun, aiming at the screen, and pulling the trigger. The NES even came with a very capable light gun in the NES Zapper, and the world🌟 was content with what it provided.

Then Konami launched the game Laser Invasion an꧙d created the LaserScope to produce alongside their title. It was a mess from the start, as the microphone that took the shot when the wearer said "fire" was either unresponsive or too responsive depending on the day.

You have never lived until experiencing a light gun title being ruined by a machine gun LaserScope because your dog is🐲 going crazy in 🔯the background.

13 R.O.B.

Let's immediately get it out of the way: R.O.B. is the most blatant ripoff of Johnny 5 that you will ever see. Now realize that R.O.B. is also the most over the top gaming peri💧pheral in the history of video games.

Back in 1983 things were looking bleak for gamers. The North American video game crash had al🌌most killed the industry and something innovative and exciting was needed to pull it out of the slump.

Welcome R.O.B.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, R.O.B. kinda sucked. He looks cool and all, but he could only actually be used with two NES games. His best attribute as a robot was his ability to stack blocks in the aptly titled Stack-Up, but this, along with some disjointed waving of t🔯he arms, was about all R.O.B. was♛ good for.

12 DK Bongos

The DK Bongos could have been brilliant. They are an🎶 inoffensive peripheral for the GameCube whose chances of being great were ruined by a complete lack of titles that supported their existence.

The Bongos were designed to be used with the rhythm-centric games, like Donkey Konga. Sadly, outside of that title —and the later DK Jungle Beat— no othꦏer games were released that took advantage of the GameCube peripheral. At one point there was a rumor of a potential Wii game or two using the Bongos, but unfortunately, they never materialized either.

Nintendo was the right co♊mpany to c𓆏ome out with such a niche product, but even with the brilliant minds within the building, most DK Bongos owners have retired their set to basement or attic at this point. Sad really.

11 Nintendo Power Pad 🔜

Yes, this is clearly a prototype for Dance Dance Revolution and all those other, similar rhythm-based dance game mats you see today. The problem is that Nintendo —in classic Nintendo fashion— made a peripheraꦍl that was pretty cool, then flooded it with exactly ONE game that was compatible with its new toy.

How no one within the company realized that this would be perfect for dancing is hard to fathom, but instead, the only game released for the Power Pad was World Class Track Meet. It is a solid game, and the pad worked surprisingly well ♔for something that was the first of its kind, but one game? Come on now Nintendo!

Oh,it was quickly discovered that using your feet was the worst way to win at the game. As a result, no Power Pad party would be complete without half the 'athletes' in attendance slamming the mat with th𝓡eir fists harder than they would the DK Bongos.

10 ♈ W🌳ii Car Adaptor

It is hard to think of a potential gaming peripheral or accessory that deviateꦆs more from its core functionality, than a Wii car adaptor. The Wii is all about motion. It is all about movement. It is all about fun and fluidity andღ space.

You know where there is no space?

In a car.

I'm sure there are a handful of owners out there —of the over 100 million Wii consoles sold— that thought this was a good idea, but I am also sure that it was a small number. Can you imagine trying to play Wii Golf (or pretty much any title for that matter) in th🔯e back of a car?

9 ꦇ Super Nintend♓o Super Scope

It seems like ꦫthe majority of bad Nintendo peripherals found their home on the NES, but it was not like the SNES was immune from the overthinking (and over developing) in Kyoto. One of the worst offenders on that system was the Super Scope.

This is another "concept over logic" peripheral that Nintendo blessed the world with. The over-sized light gun. Clocking in at around two feet iღn length, the Super Scope was an accessory you had to dedicate an entire corner of your room to storing. You also had to dedicate some serious $$$ to the scope as it ate through the six —SIX— AA batteries at a time. Not to mention that it gobbled these up at an incredible rate.

Also, for such a badass looking (in the right light) piece of equipment, the games made no sense. It is not like there were a whole bunch of ta𒊎nk shooters released for this, you mainly had to be content with shooting moles.

The moles were not in tanks FYI.

8 Vitality Sensor 🔴

The Vitality Sensor is another peripheral that was great in theory, but n😼ever had any practical applications. It was a way to continue to push the Wii in the direction of the casual market, with the long-term goal of making it an all around fitness and wellness tool.

The problem was that the company couldn't get it working properly and (importantl༺y) seemed to have no real idea of what to do with the technology. It is really hard to see how a pulse sensor could be used in a🧜ny type of game. Sure, it could be used as part of some of the Wii's fitness based products, but an actual game?

In the end, Nintendo quietly shut down development of the🌠 Vitality Sensor without it ever having hit the market, as it was only working properly for 90 out of every 100 people tes🦹ting the device. That sounds like it would have been a lawsuit waiting to happen.

7 Rumble Pak 🐽

The Rumble Pak for the N64 is, without a doubt, the best accessory on this list. It brought f📖eedback, in the form of vibrations, to games that we now find as a staple of controller setups tꦰoday.

The🦹 reason it is on this list then is that for some reason it was an add-on pack when it should have been built directly into the controller from day one.

This is such an obvious feature that it is stunning a company responsible for some of the other monstrosities on this list didn't see it coming. Every single game out there is enhanced by having feedback in the palm of your hands. The Rumble Pak gave Goldeneye and other such titles an extra kick, but only for people with enough money to th🔴row out on Ru🔴mble Paks for all the pads in play.

6 N64 DD

The N64 DD was a massive failure for Nintendo in the late 90s and early 2000s. The device was supposed to make use of the modular features of the N64, with the DD or "dynamic drive" allowing the company to make games on 64 MB magnetic discs𝓡. These discs were rewriteable, and🥃 the various accessories that came with the 64DD would let users create movies and animations to be used in games and shared online.

Again the issue here was one of following though. Few people wanted to spend money adding onto their console, especially with only 10 a few games that could potentially use it. The 64 MB disco sounded cool in theory, but the storage ability was paltry in comparisཧon to the 650 MB CDs being used by Xbox and PlayStation at the time.

This one was just a non-starter, with only 15,000🅠 total units sold of the 100,000 t꧒hat were made.