The NES Advantage feels small when you hold it with adult hands. This is the controller many of us grew up with, the arcade-style monster Nintendo released for the original NES. With its hard plastic shell, solid construction, and steel bottom it could also serve as an efficient murder weapon in the wrong hands. The buttons were much larger than the standard controller, and the Advantage had many built-in bells and whistles that seemed like a revelation.

The Advantage may not seem like much when we look at the arcade-quality sticks for sale now, but at its release it certainly set the bar for the state-of-the-art console controllers. It was something you drooled over in the stores. Even now it feels like a brick, a wonder in the time of small, plastic, square controllers. The NES Max? That was a piece of crap. The Advantage was what everyone wanted.

Extra features perfected

The Advantage offered a number of new ideas to players, and the execution was nearly flawless. Not only could you turn on turbo for either individual button, the dial above the toggle allowed you to control the speed of the turbo, with a blinking light showing you exactly how quickly the turbo function would work in the game. For shooters this was a big leg up, as every gun was now a machine gun. It's not just that turbo was offered, but how intuitive, inviting, and adjustable the feature proved to be.

The controller also had two plugs to connect to the NES, one for each player. With the flip of a switch you could use the Advantage for either the first or second player, which meant that you only needed one controller for both players if you were playing a game that featured alternating play—another genius feature that added value to the controller.

The third bonus in this unholy trinity was the slow-motion toggle on the right-hand side of the controller. This was something of a cheat, because it acted as turbo for the "start" button, taking the game in and out of its paused state rapidly. It didn't work in every game, as titles with pause screens or menus would make the game nearly unplayable. It worked on enough games to make this feature useful, however, and it's how I got through the train level of Little Nemo. I don't remember any controllers that had the slow-motion feature before the Advantage rose to its lofty position as the best controller money could buy, but I certainly remember seeing it on many controllers afterward.

The Advantage seemed to be awash with buttons and options, and even today with our multitudes of controller options and insane number of buttons and triggers on even stock controllers, the design looks brilliant and classical; the controller and the concepts behind it have aged very well. Looking back, some claim it was unwieldy, or the joystick wasn't optimal for some games, but for the converted there was no going back. The Advantage was definitely a product of its time, and also such a huge step forward it's hard to think of what life was like before we had one.

In a world of motion controls, wands, and sensors, we must pause to remember the brilliant controllers of our youth, and this was certainly the best. It was designed to be played on a table or on the floor, but I would hold it on my lap, playing games early in the morning and not stopping until I was forced to play outside, with deep grooves on the inside on my young legs.

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