I love how James was actually so careful to open that limited edition Xbox, but couldn't be bothered to look if there's a pdf of the controller's manual before playing

This is not simply *_AN_* XBox Controller. This is *_THE SUPREME_* XBox Controller.

“So why’d you get a whole flight deck? Are you a heavy flight simulator enthusiast? A pilot in training?” “Nah, just for some mech game on the OG Xbox.”

If anything, this should be an arcade. Imagine having this as a kid back in the days, you’d be the coolest kid in school, having an Evangelion sim at home

OF COURSE James has a Steel Battalion controller... the man just keeps getting more legendary. Also, because it bears repeating: "Isn't there supposed to be a snake at the end of these videos?" "IS CAT NOW!"

James : people don't read games manual James, people also don't buy a 4 part controller with 50 buttons and 3 pedals to play a single game. I think the target audience here actually would read the manual because they are the kind of people who'd buy this controller with intent to use every part of it

There is a LAN room set up with an entire 16-or-so player complement of Steel Battalion controllers + CRTs and XBoxes every year at PAX East and it is truly a sight to behold. Truly the best way to experience this game.

The new Armored Core should come out with a controller like this

Oh my god, I had never heard of this but that is the coolest standalone game controller I've ever seen

I have desperately wanted that controller for so many years. I'm so jealous.

There's a joke in the Armored Core community, about playing the games with a Steel Battalion controller. James is making all eight of us jealous.

I had the first edition version of this controller with the green buttons back in the day, but I always thought the blue buttons looked so much better. Such a rad concept, but I never had the patience to play through it all due to the learning curve and how slow the game itself can be

Some helpful things that the manual would have told you. The left pedal isn't just sidestep, you jump in the direction that you're currently traveling, so you can use it to jump foreword and backward too. 5:20 your weapons have no effect unless the tringles around the reticle have merged, with the left representing the sub weapon and the right being the primary. Certain weapons have a minimum distance that you need to be away from a target, like the ASMIS, just pay attention to the triangles 8:52 The blinking red lights just above the gauges tell you if you're about to bump into something on the left, right, and/or center. The indicator with the 10 vertical lines is how many chaff uses you have. Just below the chaff indicator are the two drop fuel tank gauges, and the main tank gauge is to the right of them. On top of the main fuel gauge is 4 lights that represent how many more hits you can take. The big red lamp between the multi-monitor and the sub weapon ammo gauge is your fire alarm indicator, that makes it clear that you've been set on fire, and that instead of ejecting you can put out the fire with the extinguisher button and keep going (that is if the fire doesn't finish off the vt) 9:20 So that's telling you that you have an incoming message, turn the knob to line up the indicator with the blinking light, and you send/receive messages with the red buttons at the top. *_Certain missions will require you to receive and acknowledge orders from command before you can complete the objective_* . FSS isn't available in 1st gen VTs, need to have a 2nd gen for that. And the proper way to play is to always be moving, lock on to enemies, and drive-by shoot them. Also you can look forward to future missions where you will have to use the manipulator, which is this little robot arm with a claw on it lol And the speedo is in kilometers👍 long post here's a potato🥔

The xbox og controller is way too big they said.

Now this looks suitable for a submarine.

looked up the manual online out of curiosity. It is 180 pages of plain instruction of game mechanics. it's a wonder people paid $200 for these. would be really cool to see something like this pop up again for a franchise like mechwarrior or something though.

God i miss when they made stuff like this. Everyone talks about VR but to me, this is real immersion. Closing the cockpit, flipping all the switches, the joysticks, the pedals. It really makes you feel like the driver inside the cockpit itself.

Legend out here got the Steel Battalion setup as well. Seeing the controller up close shows how "arcade cabinet" this is haha. I imagine the manual for this is just like an arcade machine manual, classic Capcom.

I saw the thumbnail, took me a second to turn the mass of shapes and objects into an item, and then immediately realized it was Steel Battalion. Absolute legend.

The sub wouldn't have sunk if it used this controller

A video that starts off with, "let's talk about and play with this controller," then takes a detour through talking about Xbox hardware problems, optical drive head/laser assemblies, etc. is a gem of a channel. I really did love the graphics and overall look/feel of the original Xbox, I have a stack of them in my closet all in varying states of fubar for parts and two working ones: crystal as shown here (not in mint condition I had to save after said caps went boom), and one of the crystal/translucent green ones that has been modded with a hard drive. I'm planning on wedging an APU based desktop into one if the AMD APUs that are rumored to release next year are up to spec as the rumors say.

This makes me wonder how James would go about setting up a simpit for other mech games or flight/spacesims; mind their control schemes can be even less transparent, more convoluted, and the games themselves requiring in software preflight checks to even start the game (in reference to Star Citizen mostly, though I've heard DCS is a Pandora's box). Paired with your experience with retro gear and commercial arcade machinery, seeing you tear down super expensive modern joysticks and making custom control panels would be super cool; you seem much more interested in the retro and historical experiences of games though and I really respect that

I still dream about a Steel Battalion Wii U game that comes with a jig for two GamePads and three 3DSs, so your "cockpit" is full of touchscreens and HUD elements in your lap.

Brand new DVD drive Can you believe nobody bought this?

Man, I’ve ALWAYS wanted to play with a Steel Battalion controller, it looks amazing! I’m so sad there’s never been a modern game, it seems like it’d be almost perfect for VR

I always wanted to try this game, and it's way more complicated than I expected. I can't help but imagine playing Titanfall with a controller like that. It would be amazing. We need more chungus game specific controllers.

This is so cool, love the HUD and animations; so much polish but also so much jank, such a cool idea!

James is just the gaming version of wade ngl lol

Wow that looks rad. I miss my old Xbox. I had a crystal one also, paid $40 for it and bought 2 controllers, I put a massive hard drive into it and a mod chip and it was probably my all time favourite console I’ve ever owned, it was so cool.

Steel Battalion! I love this game. Also glad to see more vids on your channel! Unsolicited pointers since that's all I have to show for spending so much time on this game. There's two triangles on the side of the enemy box (the one you click to lock on to them). The triangles on the left are for your sub weapon. The ones on the right are for main. If the triangles aren't overlapping, you're too far away (or too close) to hit with that weapon. A lot of the game is managing distance on the enemy and holding fire until the triangles are touching. The 5 switches had slightly more use in the sequel, Line of Contact. You could sort of power down and go stealth by turning them off, although you could only do it for so long. Shame that they shut that all down, I think LoC is almost entirely pointless now. The game was beeping at you because your ally was calling you back. It wanted you to press the first comms button to get their call. It's a very complicated game and controller but the game is somewhat satisfying I think. It was not just a gimmick controller. Thanks for showing it off here :)

This was the only game I talked about with my friends that we all wanted at the time cos of this crazy controller, it was right up my street thank you for actually showing me the gameplay and how it all worked 21 years later!

This game is a blast. I got it off a online seller in between the period when the original and rerelease weren't worth alot of money. I specifically got my Xbox modded solely to keep that game playable but since Xbox titles are generally the best quality of that generation for multiplatform titles and cheapest I got to replay a ton of great games thanks to Steel Battalion.

I played Steel Battalion back in the day, and this game was insane. Imagine if they remade this game, and made the bottom part of your HUD part of the controller itself, which would give you more screen area. But I doubt we'll ever see anything more from Steel Battalion.

ah man I'm so jealous. I love mech games, and I also aspire to have even a fraction of your confidence with electronics.

Oh man i got so excited when i saw that thumbnail. saw one of these at a garage sale once ages ago and wish i woulda picked it up. i love crazy controller set ups like these! always wondered how it worked and what the game was like. Very cool! thanks for that and it was neat to see you fix original xboxes! didnt know about the issues they had. very interesting stuff!

Imagine if this was in an arcad emachine that was completely closed off like a simulation machine. That would be sick

I remember reading about this game in EGM and I've always wanted to get a copy. It's a treat to see you sit down and experience it the same way I would've.

As someone who has one of these and plays steel battalion, I gotta say it feels really natural to use!

I immediately had to try out the emergency release on my USB disk drive and it worked. Thank you for explaining games and tech from times where I was only a small kid

These videos are amazing to unwind to, thank you James

I love this controller. Custom controllers open up so many avenues for creative game design, and it's a shame that this kind of stuff wouldn't be made today.

Now thats a gaming setup

I couldn’t figure out why this video felt so much like Dankpods and then I realized it’s ol’ mate James

thank you for uploading this!! this is one of the COOLEST video game experiences I've ever seen!! Please more stuff like thissss!!

I remember being blown away by this controller, seeing it an xbox magazine many moons ago. Thank you for demonstrating it!

I’m just trying to go to sleep, but then James posts, and I just can’t resist…

this gives me flashbacks of playing mech warrior on my pc like 20 years ago with a full on hobbled together dual joystick setup with foot triggers that i spent over 20 hours making it work. that was SOOOO fun. i wish i still had that spark to play things like this. now a days i just play osrs and css/2 . i guess im stuck in my ways these days XD ^w^ awesome video! thank you for sharing :3

The Steel Battalion controller was a vibe. I remember seeing it back in the day and wondering how on earth you could actually play it. Also I can totally hear you in the background Wade. Providing some dank drumming.

I love videos like this, the vibes are immaculate

i actually have a complete in box first release of this controller (The Green Button one), if i remember right the blue button one was the not only a relaunch but also came with the sequel that was multiplayer only. Also when they say manual, it aint no flimsy booklet in a normal game, this thing is a codex for WH40K tabletop levels of complex. Steel Battalion can be considered one of the most immersive sim games for a console, and came out in 2002. Unfortunately this was expensive, as in $200 in 2002, it did well, earning Line of Contact as the aforementioned multiplayer only sequel. Weirdly enough I heard that scalpers actually dropped the ball on these, with many people clearing out stocks from stores, then trying to flip an already expensive game for more money. This led to years down the line said scalpers dumping there massive stocks of these things for next to nothing, leading to a resurgence in interest in the game. Double unfortunately for those interested these days, those times of them being cheap are long gone, these things are next to impossible to find in the wild, and online can fetch as much as they cost or more when it launched, with most the time complete fetching more than double. I would consider Steel Battalion to be up there as the king of the OG Xbox Collection for its niche appeal alone.

I remember my cousin having one of those, but we didn't have an Xbox for it, let alone a specific game to play with it. Glad I came across your channel, I would love to see more of ye olde stuff that you have

Great vid. Always fascinated me when I was younger. Got a go of one at video games live when it came here. Was awesome fun.

"hey guys here's this cool xbox controller i wanted to show off real quick" as he's performing a heart transplant on two consoles

The manual is actually pretty good, well worth the read! I still have this game and controller (and the original box and manual), but sadly no Xbox - or TV for that matter. I've been kind of debating selling it for years now, but so far I've kept it around just in case I ever get enough space to set up a TV and Xbox. Rigging up something to keep the controller and pedals from sliding around is definitely a hot tip.

That controller is really cool, but I'm somehow even more jealous of your table Galaxian!

Back when games actually came with some kinda booklets and manuals this was immediately my bathroom lecture upon coming back home with a new game.

I don’t know why I didn’t expect James to have a steel battalion controller but I’m glad he is sharing it with the world. One of my favorite controllers of all time

If I was old enough to play games when this released, I would have been blown away. Because I'm blown away by this now! It's an arcade controller in your house. Man I want one.

i saw a glimpse of one of these controllers years ago at a games museum and i would have never thought i'd see it again and learn what it was for. the whole game and controller is super cool, with its mechanic involving your game deleted. i would LOVE to see a modern game like this with its own controller, but knowing modern companies, thats just a dream. thanks for the great vid james

This looks like so much fun, I'd love to have to use all of these controls it's amazing

I'd never seen one of these controllers before. It's more complicated than the Gundam pods in arcades. It would have been cool if there was something like this for the old school Armored Core games.

officially one of the best games of all time, the literal example of "they dont make them like they used to anymore"

My mate JUDD had this game and the controller - he loved it - he’s passed away now by this brought back some happy memories thank you

I love getting 4-5 Dankpods/Dankpods associated videos a week. Seeing James Channel blossoming is also great, these videos are always enjoyable and whenever I see one in my sub feed I can't wait to watch it. (Of course it's usually late at night when I see them because of the time difference, so it's a morning watch for me)

holySHIT you have the steel batalion controller

I'd heard the legends of the Steel Battalion controller but never seen it in action. I always wished there was something like it available for games like Tie Fighter.

idk why but ive watched this video 3 times this week, love your content

One reason why that controller can be so complicated, is that the controller ports are just USB ports with a different shape. Its just a standard USB device.

Man, there can't be a game controller, that's cooler than this.

I wonder if a game like this could work in VR with the same giant controller

I love a good startup sequence! This is pleasing to me

I have now discovered something probably rare and expensive that I really want, thanks James! Also, nice sweater sleeves, I imagine the rest of it looks just as snazzy.

Welp I’m here a little early. Probably not good since I’m in America lol

I wanted this SO BAD when I was a college aged kid and saw the controller at a con when it was new. I was too poor, tho Hell. I’m still too poor 😢

Man you give me oldschool tech video vibes, but with the snappy editing, and i absoluly love it you're such a cool dude

I was literally just talking about this game yesterday! It's been a dream to own this one day and have a dedicated setup just for it not because the game is amazing but because that controller is such a beautiful piece

That is actually incredible! Never knew that controller was a thing. Wow, back when games released FINISHED.

Its not piracy if you own the game lol

Wanted to see a demo of that controller since i first became aware of it. Thankyou.

Honestly James is an entire vibe and I love it.

And when I thought the OG Xbox controller couldn't get any chonkier, they made a freakin Mech Game controller for it, I love it. Lol

This is one of the coolest things for a game I have seen in my life but then again I'm only 20 odd years in. Keep it going games your channel goes over a neish thing I'm into.

I always get a chuckle out of Wade playing the background drums in your vids.

This is awesome dude! Love seeing you do your own stuff. Super interesting 🥳

holy nugget this is freaking awesome. i'm just imaging a pc master race dude with this kind of set-up controller... i would love to have that. that clear xbox is just wonderful

After hearing about the James channel from Dank Pods, I'm glad to have been able to discover it on my own randomly in my youtube feed xD

It's noble that you refused to pirate a game from 2 decades ago, definitely getting into heaven now

I remember seeing this at game crazy and wanting it so bad as a kid. It looked so cool!

I bought this game at the same time as my first ever xbox when it came out! The game came in a cool looking carboard 'crate'. It cost £200 at the time. In later levels you get to drive more advanced mechs with much better visibility, sort of digital displays all around with projected HUD info. It's the best mech game ever made. One of the hardest to master games purely because of the controller. The little thumb joystick is to move the mechs head, the left right moves the body, the big stick the guns and the pedals... man, this thing was harder to learn than playing drums or passing my driving test. Awesome video dude.

if you liked this, theres a train sim for the ps1 that kinda has the same approach as this called Densha De Go! gives you a train controller and throws you straight into it. yes it was only released in japan.

I still have this controller. This is still one of my favorite games. When the game was originally released, there were other games planned but were scrapped after release. As for the eject, if you don't eject in time, your game progress will be deleted. However, any Mechs you have unlocked remain unlocked. If you find a copy of this, I recommend it.

I remember lusting over this thing seeing it in the pages of Game Informer back in the day!

Reminds me of when I mapped a Guitar Hero controller as an Xbox 360 controller and tried to play Halo MCC with it. Went about as well as expected.

James putting genuine care into keeping something pristine is not something I expected

I love how when his hud started beeping at him, instead of looking at his massive controller of buttons, James just ignores it.

"My cameras dirty so i need to wash it" caught me so off guard 😂

You are an absolute legend. I hope you continue to make videos

Clicked on a random video at thew bottom of my feed, was not disappointed. Great video!

I finally got to play a LAN connected Steel Battalion game on original controllers at a game convention a few months ago. It was everything i had hoped for and more.

You always end videos with cats, and I love it.