6. Nintendo Power Pad
The Wii-Fit Balance Board has proved that these sorts of peripherals can work given a suitable treatment and a marketing team who actually know what the Hell they're doing, but the current success has come after literally decades of failures, with these peripherals systematically not finding a way to adequately crack the market. The Nintendo Power Pad, released in 1988, was one such failure, an early attempt to get the player to interact with a game using their body, namely their feet, which could be used to control aspects of dance and running-related titles. Really, that was the entire breadth of its applications, and so it's little surprise that it promptly faded into obscurity. The most famous game that the pad worked with was World Class Track Meet, but it quickly received complaints from players because it was so ridiculously easy to cheat; to perform a gravity-defying long jump, just jump off of the Power Pad and then back on it after a short while to rack up an epic score. Also, using your hands rather than your feet was often a lot more effective, as, of course, we all have far greater control over them. Poorly thought out, shoddily marketed and asinine in practise, it's no surprise that this one is merely a distant memory for most old-school gamers.