10 Rare & Valuable Video Game Controllers You Might Own

In this day and age, a special edition controller largely means very little. A different colour or design, maybe a game's logo slapped onto the plastic somewhere... many of them are nice, but they're very rarely more than just aesthetically pleasing.

Game controllers truly have become standardised in comparison to the previous few decades.

Gamers who grew up through the 90s and 00s were treated to all kinds of weird gamepads. If you went to a friend's, you were usually lumbered with some bulky, cheap, third-party knockoff controller whilst your friend got the naturally packed-in pad meant for the console. Listing those kinds of controllers would be a nightmare as there is an undocumented amount of the awful things and they were largely just awful versions of what we all knew.

But amongst all these, there were a few really specialist peripherals that dared to be different.

Several wild and wacky limited releases that were hard to find then are practically impossible to locate now but if you somehow have one of these in your collection then rejoice! You have a piece of gaming history. From strange shapes to bizarre button layouts, the gamepads on this list all tried something different.

Now and then throughout video game history, celebrities have tried their hand at expanding the value of their brand by looking at interactive entertainment. Actors, sports stars and musicians have all crossed the Rubicon into the world of video games to varying results.

Wu-Tang Clan, one of the 1990s most successful rap groups, tried their own attempt with the PS1 fighting game Shaolin Style. Reviews of the title range from middling to pretty positive, especially as it did its best to celebrate the musicians identity in its soundtrack and, of course, in it's specialist controller.

Stylised on the group’s logo, the Wu-Tang Shaolin Style controller is one of the most unique silhouettes for a gamepad you’ll ever see. Whilst many musicians have put their likeness to video game software, few can say they’ve done the same for hardware.

With the game launching in 1999 however, this controller was functionally outdated as its lack of sticks and vibration made it far lesser than the new and rather revolutionary DualShock. Also, as cool as the shape was, it wasn’t exactly a comfortable piece of plastic to be holding onto.

Maybe not one to particularly use then, this rare controller is more of a collectors item than the best way to play.