PlayStation Innovation Accessories
This was originally written in 2018; as of September of 2021, this same eBay seller is still active and selling a lot of these items.
My recent PlayStation kick lead me to wanting some various accessories, mainly a light gun to use for Time Crisis and a mouse for the various point and click games that made their way to the PSX. I stumbled across an eBay user going by cheapgamestuff who had quite the goldmine of products made by a third party company called Innovation. This guy must have either been involved with the company or somehow came to own an entire warehouse full of new old stock. When I was going through his listings he even had floppy discs with files for an old design program that had the box art for the Innovation products. He was selling them for way too much money for an item with such limited appeal, but I suppose someone may want them.
Third party accessory makers are generally pretty horrid and the only Innovation product that I can specifically recall is their Dreamcast import boot disc. I had fairly low expectations for everything that I was getting as the design and style of these products screams as cheap as possible.
Looking through the eBay listings, Innovation seems to have made just about everything. I generally avoid third party controllers with the exception of light guns, video cables and controller extension cables (has there ever been a first party extension cable?). I ended up buying four different PlayStation accessories, and overall I was pretty satisfied with the quality.
Innovation Mouse
This was the item I wanted the most that lead me to this goldmine of new-old stock. I was wanting it to play Clock Tower: The First Fear and a few other games that supported it. The official Sony mouse has become obscenely expensive and I am unwilling to spend so much on something as simple as a ball mouse.
The photo on eBay listing at time of purchase showed several different colors and listed them as used. The description mentioned that they were found in a box, apparently not in any sort of packaging. It seems it was only listed as used due to the fact that it was just... found in a large box. I took the ball out of the mouse and it was completely clean, no dust or gunk inside that would imply it had been used.
Honestly, not a lot to say about this one. It's a ball mouse, and it works perfectly fine. The cord is a sufficient length, the buttons click.. it works. While the listing did show the different colors, there was no way for me to pick which one I wanted when I bought it. I'm fine with the red one, it looks pretty nice.
AV Breakout Connector
This was one of the items that I was feeling skeptical about. I purchased this as I needed a solution for connecting a GunCon style controller to my TV. I'm using a Sony PVM-1354Q with the PlayStation connecting through RGB on a SCART connector. The GunCon needs composite video for sync, this breakout connector is the solution since it has RCA jacks on the side and another PlayStation AV connector at the end.
My concern here was that this might not have all of the necessary pins connected if it had been made for the US market since we just didn't really use RGB. I was also concerned that it may just be shittily made/shielded and could introduce some interference to the video signal.
Thankfully, neither of my concerns were valid. I noticed no added noise in the video and it worked perfectly fine with RGB. This is a perfectly functional item and can be had for a better price than the Namco or Sony branded breakouts.
Dual Shock Gun
Well, it couldn't all be good. This was an item that I honestly had no concerns about because, for the most part, all the third party light guns I've used have been very good. This gun is essentially unusable.
I found this to be an attractive purchase because the controller plug has two plugs so that it can be plugged used with either a Saturn or a PlayStation and on the PlayStation side of things it can function as a GunCon or just a standard light gun. The GunCon was sort of the light gun for the PlayStation and non-GunCons weren't easy to find. This isn't a huge loss, but Area 51's PlayStation version does not support the GunCon and I wanted to play some Area 51.
The gun itself has a nice look to it. The button on the left side is perfectly placed for Time Crisis, letting you get a good grip on the gun and feel as badass as one should when pointing a piece of plastic at an outdated TV. The problem with this gun is that there is something terribly, horribly wrong with the electronics and there is no way to just get a clean straight on shot.
At first I thought maybe my aim was off in Area 51, so I put in Time Crisis. There's a GunCon calibration screen at the start of Time Crisis, and I could see that the crosshair spazzes out and jumps around in a fairly consistent triangle pattern. Aiming towards the edge of the screen causes the cursor to wildly jump across the screen. Turning up the brightness on my TV didn't help, either.
I opened up the gun hoping to find a leaky capacitor, but all of them were fine. There's a fairly large rumble motor which I thought may be causing too much power draw and interfering with other electronics in the gun, so I disconnected it. No difference there, either. I guess this is just a pure instance of something being cheaply made and working accordingly. Perhaps this could be fixed by replacing the photodiode with a better one, but that seems like too much effort. I'd likely have to wait for a part such as that to be sent from China and then there would be no guarantee it would be any better... or even be a correct and compatible part.
Hard pass on this gun. I ultimately replaced this with a Nyko Super Cobra which has all of the same features and a tacky design, but it actually functions as it should.
PlayStation System Link Cable
A likely little used feature of the original PlayStation, system link. Honestly, I just sort of bought this on a whim, it was cheap. I really enjoy the PSX port of DOOM (the only knock against it is the removal of the original soundtrack), and I figured it would be cool to have around for some drunken night with friends. There's a fairly healthy list of games that support the link cable. Not all of those titles are wildly appealing, but there are some good ones there. Also, you really can't beat a setup where everyone has their own monitor.
This item also works perfectly fine. This is somewhat unsurprising, it's just some wires and plugs. I tested it out with DOOM and it was all good.
There you have it! Three of the four items were perfectly fine, and one you should avoid like the plague. Given that the three items that work well are semi-uncommon and very overpriced for what they are/do, the Innovation versions are highly recommended as a substitute for the official versions.