Is this the stupidest peripheral ever?

Above: The mini-dance mat, yesterday. Bit of a cheat if you ask us

The Handheld Dance Mat
A mini dance mat, designed to be played by hand. Which, of course, really defeats the purpose, doesn't it? But then, with most gamers possessing hugely muscular hands trained from hours of pad-grasping, combined with the reed-thin sun-starved legs of an invalid, perhaps this cop-out controller isn't the bare-faced cheat it first appears to be. Of course, it does serve the admirable duty of enabling disabled gamers to get involved, though perhaps with a slightly unfair advantage...

They say: "Dance mat controller for the hands"; "Play against people using full sized dance mats"; "Too fat, too old or too lazy to get into dancing games?"

What they don't say: "Take to parties to avoid awkward late-night dampness"; "Play against people using dance mats, incurring their disgust and envy at the same time!"; "Too fat, old or lazy? Stay that way!"

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games. 

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