Prototype Controller Fun

I've been met with a number of obstacles over the past two months that have kind of kept me away from writing original material. After school and my seasonal work cleared up, I ran into a few computer problems that kept me offline but diving through the mess of folders on my laptop, I came across a photo I haven't seen in a few years and it ultimately made me realize that it was something I had never shared online and that I am perhaps the only person who still has record of this prototype contraption.

If I had you guess what this beastly controller was supposed to function with, we could be here all day, but those keen to the crafted arcade controller scene may recognize the trademark Ransai craftsmanship. While recent arcade releases of Madden, Guitar Hero and the like seems to suggest companies are trying to bring home to the arcades, believe it or not, there was a great period of time where companies strove to bring the arcade into homes. Seemingly, until the wave of guitar clones struck U.S. shores, it was perceived gamers in the territory weren't interested in shelling out for plastic instruments or mech-controlling twin sticks and this left nearly every single music game released stateside as only a shell of its original Japanese self. As such, companies such as Ransai and Desktop Arcade stepped in to provide premium controllers to those who would be willing to have a 100 percent complete experience in the home.

While Ransai's site no longer seems to exist, I was able to sample its wares not only at the 2006 East Coast Gaming Expo, but in 2004 at a local video game store, where the special guests pulled out this boomerang-shaped prototype specialized to act as an arcade-style controller for Harmonix's Frequency and Amplitude titles. To my knowledge Ransai never developed the controller beyond this stage but its design allowed for immediate four-player compatibility in multiplayer (two players on each side of the controller) if you had a multitap and once you got used to the layout, it was an interesting way to play the game.

Looking back on the controller, the only problems I had with it were with the sensitivity of input in the game, rolling the keys always resulted in a miss so you had to be really articulate with key presses and with key positioning, I felt the arrow keys were too far apart and the item activation key was placed near the top of the controller, basically out of reach from the player's stationary position. None of the problems stopped people from having fun with the controller or the game, though, and if it was really that much of a deal to someone, Pop'N Music 8 and 9 were just a television screen away (on Ransai's AC controllers, of course).

I'd never heard about or seen the Ransai Amplitude/Frequency controller since that day so I would imagine it never saw the light of day, but it's another instance of a video game peripheral spoken of but played by very few. While in 2004 a Frequency controller would have sounded absolutely crazy on the market, who would have thought back then that soon our living rooms would be filled to the brim with plastic instruments?