Ha, that does look awesome. 
I wish I'd had the chance to play the original...it had a controller approximately the size of a kitchen table.
Yeah, it is a bit unwieldy, but surprisingly well made!
The game itself was quite slow-paced but half the fun was trying to control the robot without being shot up or falling over. I still vaguely remember the whole power on sequence you had to go through, and I think I had my mate act as gunner at one point (Soooo many buttons!
)
One awesome trick I found was that you could abuse the dodge ability for some pseudo bunny-hopping to go faster
(Was quite tricky to do without falling over... those VT's really need Mech gyros
)
