This is a really big honkin’ controller!
Like the NES Advantage (Nintendo) of the eighties, the NYKO
Maximizer is yet another attempt to refine the game controller into
something more manageable. My own theory has always been that any gamer
can use any design of controller so long as her or she has enough time
to get used to it. Nevertheless, there are many positive aspects to the
Maximizer that make it more than just a mutated Playstation controller
with a joystick attached.
For one thing, the button pad itself is huge, with large colored
buttons on a raised circular platform. The really cool thing about this
is that the platform has a 270 degree rotation. This means that if you
have never liked the position of the X button, or any of the other
buttons for that matter, you can move them around to any circular angle
that you desire. The downside of this is that the L1, L2, R1, and R2
buttons (the top buttons on the standard controller) are also on this
circular platform. Here, these buttons seemed awkward to me. And because you cannot access any buttons with your left hand, some button combinations are very difficult.
Across the center of the large controller is a series of turbo
switches, corresponding to each button on the controller. Each of these
switches determines the firing speed of each of the regular controller buttons,
from automatic to fast. As an example, suppose that you are in a plane
and your mission is to blow up everything in sight and, let’s suppose
that you have a nearly unlimited supply of machine gun bullets and/or
rockets and missiles. Unconcerned about the stocks in your personal
armory, you simply wish to destroy everything in sight. With the
Maximizer, you can switch the “fire” button to turbo and launch rounds
twice as fast as normal, or flip the switch to “auto” and launch rounds
in one continuous stream. Either way, much carnage will occur.
And another bonus includes a wrist-rest right under the circular
button platform, so as to avoid the horrors of carpal tunnel syndrome
from prolonged use of this device.
So how does this thing work in action? The answer is fairly
well, depending on the type of game you want to play. The controller is
at its best when playing your standard shoot-em-up, or the “jumping over little
men” type of Super Mario Brothers action game. It also performs well
with a variety of flight games. My fraternity brothers used
it on NCAA Gamebreaker ’97 and thought that it added an extra feel to
sports games as well. However, when we tried the controller on Car and
Driver’s Grand Tour Racing ’98, everyone unanimously hated the joystick
and preferred the Playstation’s standard controller. The fact of the
matter is that the
Maximizer simply does not give one the control
necessary to handle a race car on a tight course. But, that should not
take away from the fact that the controller performed well otherwise,
and except for a somewhat short cord length, is a handsome addition to
any Playstation.
