10 Rare & Valuable Video Game Controllers You Might Own

When Xbox came a long every Tom, Dick and Harry got their jokes in about Microsoft trying to make PC games work on home console, pointing at the apparent failure of Dreamcast’s keyboard peripherals and so on. Whilst the Xbox obviously did a great job of becoming a console rather than a miniature PC, there was one game that needed a lot more buttons than were on the standard controller.

Steel Battalion was only playable if you had it’s huge control unit and the word is apt because this guy is a UNIT. 34 buttons, two joysticks and three floor pedals: Steel Battalion’s gameplay was all about learning and mastering such a complex control scheme. It was an attempt to make the game’s bipedal tanks feel super realistic, on top of the already hyper-real gameplay that included deleting your save data if you died (yes, really).

You better figure out how those three dozen buttons operate fast soldier, or you’ll be playing the first mission over and over.

Upon release, the controller actually sold out and subsequent production runs changed the green buttons to blue. Either way, if you’ve got a Steel Battalion set up then you’re the envy of the Xbox faithful - especially if it’s that super rare first edition.