Fascinating Look Back at the Triax Turbo Touch 360, a Controller from the 90s That Put Touch Sensors in Place of Buttons

Gamers in the 1990s sat through plenty of marathon sessions on consoles like the Super Nintendo as well as SEGA Genesis, and their thumbs suffered as a result of continual pressure on rigid directional pads. Triax had a solution for the problem in the Turbo Touch 360. They abandoned the traditional movable plastic directional pad in favor of a flat octagonal plate with capacitive sensors underneath. So all you had to do was lightly lay your thumb on the surface, and it would register the direction you were attempting to go in.

The plate had eight sensors grouped around it to cover the majority of the straight shoots and diagonals, but because you don’t get a smooth, continuous circle of movement, it wasn’t fully analog, despite being dubbed the Turbo Touch 360, which implies complete freedom in all directions. Players could lean on the pad to achieve greater movement without having to hammer down as hard. Triax even went so far as to have an orthopedic specialist praise the design, claiming that it reduced scorching and numbness during those all-day gaming sessions to death.

Magazine ads showed the controller in action, and one of the examples they used was how you could land special moves in Mortal Kombat without having to struggle, and to top it all off, there was a turbo fire switch for shooting fans, giving you an advantage in older games that rewarded you with points for tapping buttons quickly.

The controller made its debut at a large electronics expo toward the end of 1993. Then there were versions for the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis, with the Genesis version also working on certain earlier platforms such the Atari and Commodore. People who took one up immediately noticed how unusual it felt; more specifically, it was far too simple to accidentally trigger an input by resting your thumb on the plate. So precision deteriorated in tight platform games or when you had to make sudden changes of direction.

Most reviewers stated it was overly sensitive and awkward to use for an extended period of time. One modern test, in which they went back in and tinkered with the loose contacts inside a Super Nintendo, demonstrated that it was possible to make it somewhat usable again, but it was still not as accurate as a standard pad, especially in side-by-side runs through Mario or fighting games.

However, Triax did not give up immediately. Next thing you know, news spreads that they’re working on a new controller called the Multi-Function, which, based on certain designs and accounts, resembled a joystick rather than a flat plate. And, to top it all off, there were two more buttons on the sides that indicated they would allow you to manipulate three dimensions in games. Capcom was looking at it, and Electronic Arts had begun development on six titles that would make use of the new inputs. It was set to release for the price of a conventional game at the time, and it looked very good, but then it simply… vanished.