As if the world of Tron wasn’t cool enough — who didn’t want to get sucked into a computer world with sweet light bikes… and Jeff Bridges! — the arcade game had controls which included a cool round dial and a huge fluorescent blue joystick that felt pretty damned good in the hand. It was reminiscent of another early arcade game’s funky controller: Zaxxon. But whereas the Zaxxon flight stick seemed like overkill for a game whose chief contribution to games was the concepts of diagonal up and down, the one from Tron actually added to the cool look of the arcade cabinet and the future-nerd neonscape. Playing it in a dark arcade was like putting up blacklit posters in your room, but without incurring the wrath of your mom.

So, huzzah to the brave early game hardware designers who were not content to give us mere rubber sticks to pilot our crude on-screen sprites. Here’s to totally impractical awesome game controllers that stood out from the crowd.

(Image from the awesome Time-Out Tunnel movie.)