At first glance, the 8BitDo Arcade Controller is an intimidating device, a flat black block bristling with buttons laid out in a pattern that looks less designed for fingers and more like an archaic form of Braille. But as my fingers came into contact, it only took a second for them to find their natural resting places. At second glance, the lack of a stick on the left side is odd, but that’s because this is a leverless controller. It’s all buttons, baby, and for $90/£80, 8BitDo might have just made the best value-for-money leverless on the market.
Review unit supplied by 8BitDo.
Given the lack of sticks, it’s pretty obvious that the Arcade Controller is intended for very specific games. You aren’t going to be racing cars in Forza Horizon 5 with this, although I suppose nothing is stopping you from attempting it. No, it’s intended for fighting games, so I fired up some old-school Street Fighter, a bit of Mortal Kombat 11 and so on. Other styles of game benefit from it, too. In my case, I played some Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and DuckTales: Remastered. Yup, outside of fighting games, the Arcade Controller excels in 2D side-scrollers and retro titles.
If, like me, you don’t typically play with arcade controllers, then there’s definitely a learning curve to battle with at first. The biggest hurdle was the positioning of the up key, which is near the very bottom of the controller—a contradiction that my poor brain struggled with. This is a standard design choice for these hitbox-style controllers: by using your thumb on the up key, you can hammer out button combinations across right, left, and down faster, because up is usually assigned to jump in fighting games. Another way to think about it is like playing on PC, where the spacebar is typically used for jumping. But when you play something like Streets of Rage 4, where the up key is needed for moving around, the layout can feel peculiar. Luckily, there’s a solution.
There isn’t a stick to flick, but there are some beans to flick. Er, bean-shaped buttons to press, I mean. And yes, this is the second flicking-related joke I’ve made recently, and I shall make no apologies for it. Four of them are scattered around the board, two of which are dedicated to being reprogrammed to take on the function of the other buttons. For example, I quickly changed the leftmost top bean to the up key, turning it into a PC-style WASD layout, which made playing stuff like Streets of Rage 4 far easier. This flexibility helps overcome the layout learning curve massively.
There is a confusing aspect to 8BitDo’s marketing of the controller in regards to buttons and programming. You see, on the official site it lists the Xbox version I’m reviewing as having “two programmable buttons” in the form of the leftmost P1 and P2 bean buttons, whereas on the Switch version it talks about having four programmable buttons. Except, both controllers have exactly the same amount of buttons in exactly the same locations. The actual difference is that the Xbox one has two “dedicated” buttons in the sense that they are assigned to nothing out of the box, while the other two are assigned to right-stick button and left-stick button. The Switch version ships with four of the bean buttons unassigned. Oh, and you can remap every single button anyway. It isn’t a huge problem, but the way the marketing is worded makes it seem like the Switch version has two extra buttons for you to mess with, and that’s just not the case.
You’ll need to download the official software to fiddle around with the layouts, though. It’s a decent package: plain, simple, doesn’t overcomplicate anything, and seems reliable. I have no complaints about it. There is also a macOS build of the software available, but user reports have been mixed. 8BitDo are still updating it, so hopefully any issues will be ironed out soon.
This ties into another quirk: the manual. It’s shite. It doesn’t do a very good job of explaining aspects of the controller, including never mentioning the profile button or how many profiles can be stored. As far as I can tell, it’s two. It also doesn’t do a good job of explaining the mapping button, which is used to remap controls without needing to go into the 8BitDo software, although it is limited to only the P1 and P2 buttons. This might also be where the programmable button confusion I discussed earlier comes into play. My guess is, although I cannot confirm, that the Switch version allows all four bean buttons to be remapped via this method.
Another potential problem is that the Xbox version has no way of mapping thumbstick inputs to any of the buttons, whereas the Switch version can. Why is this important, you may ask? Well, certain games simply can’t function properly without stick inputs. For example, Super Smash Bros on the Switch needs that functionality. Dead Cells on Xbox is the same: it registers the Arcade Controller’s directional inputs as a d-pad, which it won’t accept for movement. If you play on PC, however, there is a way around this issue via Steam’s built-in ability to remap controls. Using that, you can assign analogue-stick inputs to the directional keys on the controller, and voila: playable Dead Cells or the game of your choice.
The rest of the buttons are grouped together toward the right side of the controller. All the typical face-buttons are hanging out around the left side of the grouping, while the triggers and bumpers are lurking on the right. Again, this can take a little while to get used to because there are a lot of buttons bunched together—for the first few hours, my right hand would wind up hitting the wrong buttons as it tried to return to its neutral starting point. Persevere, though, and everything starts to click. Before long, I was banging out combos so fast I felt like a pro, at least until I headed online and got my ass kicked. Sadly, an awesome controller does not make an awesome player.
However, while it can’t help you train your reflexes or learn your i-frames from your punishes, it can make you a faster player. Think about it: on a controller, your thumbs each hover over four buttons apiece, and moving from one to the other takes time. Here, every single finger is already resting on its assigned button, ready to do its duty. Do those slivers of time make a huge difference? Probably not to an average idiot like myself, but the more you get into fighting games, the more that time counts. And I cannot overstate how amazing this kind of controller feels when playing platformers such as the recently released Hollow Knight: Silksong. The precision a button-only controller provides is beautiful.
Nor can I overstate the simple pleasure of using the controller. Maybe it’s the nostalgic pull of playing arcade machines back in the day, or the joy of having big buttons to whack, or the pleasing clicky noise they make. Maybe it’s all of these factors. All I know is that playing games with the Arcade Controller feels awesome. Even if I had not managed to find any advantages, it would still be worth it just for the feel.
Speaking of things that click, Kailh Wizard low-profile mechanical switches are hiding underneath the plastic key caps and provide an immensely satisfying sound, but also an immensely loud one. Your mileage is going to vary here depending on how sensitive you are to noise. Of course, you can swap them out for whatever else you fancy very easily. The plastic caps are a different story: they’re quite thin and a little clacky, but aren’t so easily swapped out due to non-standard sizing.
Measuring in at 30.1cm by 20.1cm and just 2.2cm thick, and weighing 1123g, the Arcade Controller is not overly large while also not being cramped. It’s also light without feeling cheap—in fact, the whole product has a premium feel, especially considering its $90/£80 price tag. It’s even finished off with a nice tempered glass facing, which can be removed and replaced with a custom design, if you want to get fancy. I love the Xbox version’s black paint job, although the Switch version’s retro styling also looks terrific. The underside has a rubber coating, which, in a nice touch, has a cool Xbox-themed pattern. I found this coating excellent for resting the controller on my lap for some casual gaming. Of course, it works just as well for gripping a desktop, and there are two small feet that flip out to give it a tiny bit of angle.
Connection options are a generous 3m / 9.8ft USB-C to USB-A cable that’s excellent for couch gaming, or there’s the 2.4GHz wireless dongle that is stored inside the controller itself when not in use. Wired is, of course, the objectively best method of connection since it cuts down on any potential input lag, but as a muppet who likes fighting games—and admits to being terrible at them—I found the wireless 2.4GHz was plenty responsive. If you’re still worried, the wired connection claims a mere 4ms response time, although I have no way of testing this. If you have the Switch/PC version, there’s inbuilt Bluetooth as well, which gives you extra flexibility, letting you connect to a tablet, for instance.
The Switch version actually seems to get a lot of extra features. But you do at least get a battery with three times the capacity on the Xbox version, plus some fancy RGB illumination around the buttons. That equates to a claimed 20-hour playtime with the lights on, or 40 hours if you turn off the light show and therefore feel sad about your life decisions. The Switch version and its leaner 1,000 mAh Li-ion battery gets an estimated 20 hours of gameplay and no super-shiny lights.
Up on the top left of the controller, you’ll find a volume dial that’s used in conjunction with the 3.5mm connection in case you want to hook up some headphones. Next to that, there’s a lock toggle for tournament play, then a mapping button, the Xbox button, and a profile key. Finally, on the right, you have a button for turning the lighting on and off, and the standard share, start, and menu buttons. If you fancy disabling the bean buttons entirely, there’s a set of keycaps in the box which you can swap out to do exactly that.
SOCD options are included, which for the dumb-dumbs out there (including me), means how the controller handles two opposite directions being pressed at the same time. For example, via the software, you can opt to have it so pressing up and down, or left and right at the same time cancels each other out. This makes the controller fully legal for tournament use under standard SOCD-clean rules.
In Conclusion….
There are other controllers of this nature on the market which are better, of that there is no doubt. However, they also cost considerably more, making them a difficult proposition for all but the most hardcore players. At £80/$90, the 8BitDo Arcade Controller offers superb value for money backed by a reputable brand name. It’s flexible, feature-rich, and surprisingly accessible for beginners, thanks to its remappable bean buttons and hitbox-style layout. The build quality is excellent for the price, the switches are satisfying (if a little loud), and the connectivity options cover virtually every scenario a player might need.
In short: for anyone looking to get into leverless play without breaking the bank, or for veterans who want a reliable secondary controller, the 8BitDo Arcade Controller is hard to beat. It won’t magically make you better, but it makes playing games in the way you want both fun and precise.
