Capcom · 2002 · Xbox
Forty-four inputs across three pieces of hardware, including foot pedals and a physical eject lever you had to hit before your mech exploded. It cost $200 and came with a game attached.
Steel Battalion was created by Capcom in 2002, developed by Nude Maker — largely former Human Entertainment staff — with Capcom Production Studio 4, and it cannot be played with a normal controller. It ships with its own, and the controller is the product. It comprises 44 input points spread across a three-piece rig: two joysticks, a throttle handle, a radio channel dial, five switches, three foot pedals, an array of buttons, and — most famously — a dedicated eject button under a hinged safety cover. The player pilots a "Vertical Tank", a bipedal armed mecha, and the controller's layout mirrors the fiction: you do not press "start engine", you run an ignition sequence. The whole package, game included, retailed for $199.95. The eject button is what made it legendary. If your VT is about to be destroyed, you must flip the cover and hit eject before it goes. Fail to do so and the game deletes your save. Not the mission — the save. The pilot died, and the game treats that as final, which is the single most committed piece of hardware-fiction integration in the medium. Only limited quantities were manufactured, they sold out, and the rig is now a serious collector's item.