ASCII Stick II Turbo and Hudson Joycard Mk II for Famicom

 

Two excellent controllers for the Nintendo Famicom. Both plug in via the expansion port, which the vast majority of Famicom titles support (so as to not be required to use the hard-wired controllers.) Western developed titles are more hit and miss, since the NES didn't have an expansion port and you could instead just plug whatever controller you wanted to use into the controller ports (honestly a superior situation than the Famicom's hard-wired setup.)

Hudson Joycard Mk II is almost identical to a Famicom/NES controller except for being a little bit larger and having autofire switches built in. It's like a precursor to the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx controllers (no surprise since that was Hudson as well.) It handles perfectly and the larger size makes it more comfortable than stock controllers, while the longer cable makes it more convenient than the hard-wired famicom gamepads. At least two other versions of this controller were released, one to coincide with Hector '87/Starship Hector (their caravan shooter for 1987) and a Sansui branded one which is even thicker, has an even longer cable, and adds a headphone jack (the Famicom can pass audio through the expansion port) with a fake stereo feature where it pans audio to left or right depending on whether you're pressing left or right. That one also saw a release in the US, with an RCA audio cable that could plug into your NES instead of using the non-existent expansion port.

All three joycards are excellent, but the Sansui is more prone to failure due to using two PCBs "sandwiched" together in order to add all the extra audio functionality (the solder points for the bridge tend to crack.) If one shows up "for parts" and you feel handy with soldering, maybe see if you can reflow some solder and get it working again.

The ASCII Stick II Turbo is microswitched (seimitsu switches I believe) with a form factor/size very similar to the NES advantage but with a more premium feel. The third button is actually an autofire knob, presumably with the theory that you can adjust autofire rates in real time with your thumb without moving your hand from the primary buttons. It also has a 4/8 way selector, which doesn't change the actual gate on the joystick, it just makes it so it doesn't send diagonals. An unnecessary feature since Famicom ports of games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong presumably already have logic to handle diagonals elegantly. It has an expansion port on the back to daisy chain another controller, and you can even hook your Family BASIC cassette record to it if you don't want to pull the keyboard out. The original ASCII Stick is said to have an even better build quality, but this one has more features, is more affordable, and still better than anything we got in the US.

Both of these have become my daily drivers on my Famicom/Twin Famicom.