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Remembering the NES Advantage

This isn't an LTTP post, as I was one of the first to the original party.

Ars did a great post about this fantastic controller: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/masterpiece-the-nes-advantagegods-own-controller.ars

It really was remarkably well designed (especially considering the crappy NES Max). Sturdy and really helped playing some games. Especially track and field, even without using the turbo.

And honestly, who doesn't remember putting a book on the "A" button with turbo on to buy 99 health potions for the original Final Fantasy?
 

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
I loved it and ended up getting 2 as a kid. I have no idea if I still have them though. :(

One thing I remember is that the first one I got was smooth and when I got the second one a couple of years later there was a slight texture on it.
 
The NES Advantage is my only arcade stick. Actually, I think it might even be older than me...

Once, I hooked up my NES Advantage to my SNES and played Pac-Man or something. That was fun. But besides that, I usually preferred the regular NES controller or the bone controller.

I wasn't a fan of the A and B buttons, but besides that, it was built like a rock.

Edit: Come to think of it, I didn't grow up with any games that could have really used the Turbo buttons. Like, no scrolling shooters. I feel like that's a big loss. I coulda been the next Takahashi Meijin. :(
 
The only games I recall liking the advantage were ones like Track & Field which required serious button mashing sans turbo. I always felt the stick was inferior to or at best equal to the d-pad in just about every game. Still better than that circle thing on the max (I really hated that controller). I did like all the buttons, switches, and nobs on it. Looked pretty impressive to an 8 year old, like it had power. Turbo was always nice, made games like Skate or Die marginally playable. Damn that Bart Simpson, I wasted two of the few precious games I got as a kid because of him.
 
Why would you do that? said:
The NES Advantage is my only arcade stick. Actually, I think it might even be older than me...

Once, I hooked up my NES Advantage to my SNES and played Pac-Man or something. That was fun. But besides that, I usually preferred the regular NES controller or the bone controller.

I wasn't a fan of the A and B buttons, but besides that, it was built like a rock.

Edit: Come to think of it, I didn't grow up with any games that could have really used the Turbo buttons. Like, no scrolling shooters. I feel like that's a big loss. I coulda been the next Takahashi Meijin. :(
How did you accomplish this feat?
 
I remember the capcom power fighting stick working for nintendo and super nintendo with an adapter cable that was provided, but the advantage just had the 1-2 player dongle...
 
The Advantage made playing Gradius a cakewalk with its slow motion setting. I was a pussy ass gamer as a kid and needed every "advantage" out there
 

Kuramu

Member
I preferred the "Jammer". It had suction cups on the bottom. I forget who made it, but they had a bumble-bee in the logo
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I don't use it much, but I own one. The part that say "NES Advantage" is coming off (I forget if I did that or it came that way though, I may of done it when taking off the price written on it), and I had to put a new ball on due to it missing the one it shipped with. It cost $1 though, so I can't complain to much, and it looks really nice with a red ball.
 

Jme

Member
devildog820 said:
Four thumbs down for that pun.

The advantage of that pun, is that he didn't max out the amount of puns you could stick into a post. He's got that under control, but I guess it still pushed your buttons.
 

Arozay

Member
It was good, but it was no SpeedBoard™

208301-nes_oddities_12_slide.jpg
 
LosDaddie said:
I remember wanting one, but my parents refused to buy one for me.

"Your controllers work just fine, don't they?"

Probably it had something to do with the fact that it was $40. In 1986. Which is almost $80 in today's dollars.
 
in order to be a NES Pro you had to have the NES Advantage.

speaking of controllers, I remember trying to use the Power Glove to play tetris
 
handofg0d said:
The advantage of that pun, is that he didn't max out the amount of puns you could stick into a post. He's got that under control, but I guess it still pushed your buttons.

You maxed out the puns in a crappy way, because you slid them in there.
 

turnbuckle

Member
Kuramu said:
I preferred the "Jammer". It had suction cups on the bottom. I forget who made it, but they had a bumble-bee in the logo

Had both and preferred the Jammer too. I actually ended up just calling both the jammer (sort of like kleenex/qtips) and forgot the NES Advantage name until several years later when I saw another one at a used game shop.
 

gstaff

Member
I remember buying it because I thought it would help me beat Mother Brain.

Other than looking really cool and being great for Track and Field II, I rarely used it.
 

Jme

Member
Kuramu said:
I preferred the "Jammer". It had suction cups on the bottom. I forget who made it, but they had a bumble-bee in the logo

Beeshu.

I have dozens of controllers for the NES, I had the insane idea of collecting them once.

I have a few Jammers, Advantages, Max, Dogbone, along with slews of wireless, and just random weird ones like the Bandai MEGA (Programmable controller to run like button macros), and the Sansui Joycard (It has a headphone jack on the controller, so you can plug the controller into your audio out, and then a normal length set of headphones plug into the controller so you can sit farther back than usual.)
 
Megadragon15 said:
How did you accomplish this feat?
The NES and SNES controllers are pin-by-pin compatible (see this image for NES and this image for SNES), so I did the really ghetto thing and used 5 bent paperclips to connect my NES Advantage to my SNES. It worked well except for the face buttons, but they didn't matter for Pac-man.

As a side note, if you do the opposite and hook up an SNES controller to the NES, the controls are perfect, and Y maps to B and B maps to A.

Kuramu said:
I preferred the "Jammer". It had suction cups on the bottom. I forget who made it, but they had a bumble-bee in the logo
Sounds like it was made by Hudson. They liked making rapid fire controllers because of Takahashi Meijin, a famous Japanese person who worked for Hudson and was known for pushing buttons 16 times/second or something.
 
i can mash at about 16 times a second! the nes advantage was one of the few turbo controllers that was faster then me

I could kill an Nes max at track and field.
 
As for joysticks, I used to really love this one for the Atari 2600:

wico.jpg


Still have it. Back in the day, we bolted it onto a piece of wood to give you extra leverage.
 

thomaser

Member
Zaro said:
It was good, but it was no SpeedBoard™

208301-nes_oddities_12_slide.jpg

Wow, I've been a collector of weird Nintendo-things for ages, but have never seen this thing. I'll try to find one now.

By the way, another thing I've never seen in person is the diabolical lock-thing that parents could fasten to the flap on the NES, so that it was impossible to put games in the system. It kinda looked like a screwdriver. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I saw a picture of it in the official Scandinavian Nintendo magazine around 1988 or so. The text said that it was sold in the USA.

Edit: Found a picture:
homework_first-722421.jpg


The NES had all the coolest peripherals.
 
Yeah I remember first seeing it used in Ghostbusters 2 and eventually I was able to find one for cheap and it was AWESOME! Took a while to get used to playing platformers with a stick (though as mentioned above, paying for potions in FF1 was a lot easier)

In High School a classmate GAVE me his Super Advantage but I remember it being SO GOOD for games like MMX and obviously SSF2. By the time I got into N64 and PS1&2 I got used to pads again. I eventually sold and gave away my old Nintendo stuff (I was young and stupid then)

When I get a chance, I definitely want to get used to having sticks again especially since I'm way more into fighters now (and have a variety to play)

I'm mostly waiting for a MvC3 fightstick to come out. Hopefully one with Shinkiro art.
 
I still have my NES Advantage in a storage box, along with the system, the games, the controllers, the Zapper and a hand-written notebook full of cheat codes. The Advantage was the only arcade stick controller I owned that I actually used; every other arcade stick I've bought only got used a handful of times and was shortly put away.
 

Jme

Member
I've also got a couple of these:

510Of-ys9IL.jpg

Beeshu Zinger, I have a few different color combinations.
 

wondermega

Member
loved the Advantage! I remember seeing it advertised on an backcovere of an early issue of Nintendo Fun Club (I think it was the Punch Out one) it looked AWESOME. I picked it up ASAP and never looked back... every game was just so much easier with it (firing in Contra, Mega Man, etc) The slow mo could be grating at times but who cares. Used it for every game besides RC Pro Am which just handled horribly with it.

I also picked up the Max but I hated it. It felt unresponsive and funky.

When the Genesis came out I never felt compelled to get anything else, I felt they really nailed it with those crazy huge joypads that launched with the system.
 

Afrikan

Member
it worked great for games like Track and Field 2. :) damn events were hard ass fuck, thank god for the turbo.

I still have the Advantage somewhere in the family house, along with these two other controllers

nes_max.jpg

nesuforce-431x300.jpg


betcha they still work.
 
Afrikan said:
it worked great for games like Track and Field 2. :) damn events were hard ass fuck, thank god for the turbo.

I still have the Advantage somewhere in the family house, along with these two other controllers

nes_max.jpg

nesuforce-431x300.jpg


betcha they still work.

Wrong. They never worked. Especially U-Force.

I remember just pressing the black part of the Max controller to move around. That disc slider was such a piece of crap.
 

Araxen

Banned
NES and Super Advantage are two of the best sticks I have ever owned. Do they even make sticks like this anymore? All I can ever find are the "clicky" sticks nowadays.
 

Afrikan

Member
devildog820 said:
Wrong. They never worked. Especially U-Force.

I remember just pressing the black part of the Max controller to move around. That disc slider was such a piece of crap.

well, when I said they worked, I meant they are not broken like some of these new gen controllers break.

but yes I agree with what you mean..they were never good replacements for the regular NES controller...but each served a pretty good purpose for me.

the Max's disc thing worked perfect for Track and Field 2's hammer throw....and the U-Force...well it was a Fucking UFORCE!!! haha, couldn't believe I was able to get that thing. It was a waste of money...but damnit, I had me a f'n UForce!
 

Natetan

Member
wow, such a luke warm response to the nes advantage.

I thought it was awesome. the slo motion was useful sometimes, turbo was great, and i liked the joystick.

I was not a fan of the super advantage though. Bought it for sf2, and couldn't stand the colors and all the clicking the joystick made.

nes advantage forever!
 
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