One of the coolest peripherals.

I've never been into gimmicky peripherals. Hand me a standard controller, sit me down in front of a blazing game, and I'm happy. Still, I've owned a light gun or two in my time: the Dreamcast light gun, although relatively unused, was one of my favorites; the Pong box, with the two dial controllers, is still one of the most unique peripherals of all time; and the Sega fishing controller showed nice innovation. But although peripherals such as the Nintendo Power Glove and the unreleased Sega VR Helmet were cool technically, they generally had little to no practical use--and, as a result, I couldn't care less about them. However, one peripheral that was both intelligently designed and useful when it was originally released is Nintendo's Rumble Pak. Stick a Rumble Pak into the N64 controller, and already-entertaining games such as 1080 Snowboarding and 1080 Snowboarding and even more obscure products like Aero Fighters Assault began using the peripheral. The rest, as they say, is history. In response to the N64 Rumble Pak, Sony released the dual-shock controller, which is still one of my favorite controller designs ever. Sega followed with the release of the Dreamcast Rumble Pak. In the near future, the controller for the upcoming Xbox and GameCube consoles will feature built-in rumble support. Introduced with the N64, the rumble function has now become an essentiality.

Having said all that, the rumble functionality seems to have reached a plateau. The dual-shock controller is probably the most adept at providing varying levels of rumble functionality, but after some time, even this peripheral has gradually become pedestrian and unexciting in providing a true sensation of feel. It will be interesting to see the next step in the evolution of the Rumble Pak. Perhaps a better way of providing gradually increasing rumble functionality, rather than having three or four preset rumble levels, would be cool. Perhaps incorporating an electric shock into the controller--wait, that's been done, and it's a wee bit masochistic for my tastes. Regardless, the Rumble Pak is one of a few peripherals, other than the controller or perhaps a light gun, that suits my tastes. Everything else is either a brief distraction or totally useless.