From the Department of Plastic Crap, we bring you the Tactile+Plus, a pleonastically-named set of widgets that stick onto your smartphone's screen and mimic the feel of a real game control-pad.
The little nubbins solve the big problem of touch-screen gaming: you have to keep looking down to see where your fingers should be. By putting an nine-dot circle (one centre spot and eight directions) over the virtual D-pad, and up to four other plastic warts over any on-screen buttons, you can make sure you're always touching the right spot.
Presumably (it's hard to tell, as the site follows Japanese tradition by putting all the specs into an untranslatable JPG), the conductive goodness of your fingers is, well, conducted to the capacitive screen below. This means that, although this is seen on an iPhone in the picture, it should work with any modern smartphone.
Ironically, the product shot shows Streetfighter IV. This game is clearly desperate for some tactile feedback, but it also has a lot of special moves which need you to slide your finger around the D-pad. Easy on a moving, rocking switch, but less so on top of unmoving nubbins.
The Tactile+Plus can be ordered now, from Japan, for ¥630, or around $7.80. Hopefully some enterprising Westerner will import them.
Tactile+Plus product page [Nosho-An via Oh Gizmo]
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