Yes, ROB was terrible. I used to just have my brother hold the buttons down on the second controller to beat Gyromyte. It was so lame. But then later, the running pad (can't recall the name, Power Pad?) replaced ROB where you could play track & field type of games on that DDR looking pad. It was a little better, but still not very good.
The NES Max was the best controller for the original NES by far, IMO.
The Power Glove was the most overrated controller I'd ever seen though. It just sucked hard. I found the U-Force
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Force to be better.