Arcade sticks seek to replicate the coin-op glory days by bringing the experience of a full-sized ball-ended joystick and huge bottons to the home console.

Each new console of each new generation brings several iterations of the ’stick, and they are, almost to a one, a huge waste of money. First of all, the coin-op glory days are gone, and you should just let them go. No $50 joystick is going to bring back the epileptic-seizure carpeting and dank mall corners of the Aladdin’s Castle era. And while we’re talking about it, you should throw away all those skinny neckties, too.

Arcade sticks are primarily used for fighting games, a category that has all but disappeared as shooters have emerged as the dominant gaming genre. And buying one stick isn’t really an option: fighting games are no fun to play alone and being the guy who uses the stick while your opponent tries to rock a fireball on the clunky Xbox D-pad just makes you a douche.

So you’re spending, what, more than $100 for dual arcade sticks that will spend most of their lifetime in a drawer or closet? Your mother was right. You really are terrible with money.

Then there are the gigantic dual-stick custom contraptions that you see in DIY magazines or on the gadget blogs. They look like they weigh about five thousand pounds and will crush the cheap TV tray you were using to support your previous cheap plastic controllers. One long two-player stick also means you’ll be sitting really really close to your buddy on the couch as you play. Not trying to cast aspersions or anything, but let’s just say we don’t miss the days when playing in the arcade meant becoming intimately familiar with what your friends smell like up close.

Arcade sticks, as valiant an effort as they may be, are just sad wastes of time and money. For the next generation of consoles, let’s not have them and say we did, huh?