Steam Controller is a flawed masterpiece that I wish we had gotten another iteration of.
Also, speaking of the 8bitdo Pro 2 line, the wired Xbox version of the Pro 2 is pretty great. It’s similar to the regular Pro 2, but it has analog triggers, uses Xinput, and has Xbox coloring and branding. It’s like they took the best parts of Xbox, SNES, and Playstation controllers and mushed them all together.
I’m also still incredibly salty about this. The Quake 1 and 2 remasters also are a huge contrast to how the Unreal franchise has been handled.
I recently got my gog copy of UT2004 running on my Steam Deck. It was a huge pain in the ass that I could have circumvented by buying a Steam copy… but of course that’s no longer an option. I guess Epic doesn’t want easy money from their old games.
Gyroscope controls. Especially for first-person shooters and other first-person games. I used to be a diehard mouse and keyboard player when it came to FPSes until I played Quake 1 on the Switch with gyro controls turned on. Now I’m trying to find ways to be able to play every FPS in my collection on a TV with gyro aim because it just feels so much better.
RPGs in the style of the Ultima games, specifically ones that use a keyword-based conversion system. Aside from the Ultima series itself, the only other examples I know of that use a system like this are Cythera - a 1990s Macintosh shareware game that was very similar to Ultima 6 and 7 - and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.
Nintendo has never been very successful going after the high-end market.
This is 100% correct and worth emphasizing, since I think a lot of people don’t understand Nintendo’s history with this.
They tried to aim for a more premium console with the N64 and the Gamecube, and the result was Sony ate their lunch. Then they came out with the Wii – widely derided for being underpowered and gimmicky – and it was a hugely popular financial success. Nintendo knows by now what works for them and what doesn’t.