A lost of people ask me about joystick controllers for their retro box. The ones I offer on the website are a good value for the price, but there are many other available. I have been experimenting with two of them, and I am here to give you my impressions.
The first is the Edge Super joystick by Emio. It is lightweight, but with responsive buttons and a good feel. Unfortunately, the one I bough had a problem, where the Start button would not work, unless I turned on the Turbo option for button A. I checked on Amazon reviews, and this appears to be a common problem, so I cannot recommend this product.
The second is the Nes30 Arcade stick from 8Bitdo, one of the leading controller companies on the world. The only place I have been able to find this is at Fry’s, though Amazon has a similar listing. I can’t confirm it is the same device, however. It works both Bluetooth, and wired, but I only played it wired, as I dislike Bluetooth controllers, at least for the retro box. The joystick has a lot of weight to it, and the buttons have a good feel. I tried it out in various games, and liked it quite a bit. The buttons are large and well space, which is good for those of us with big hands. In fighting games like Street Fighter II, special moves are a lot easier to pull off than with a standard gamepad. On games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, the joystick is better than a standard controller, but not perfect. The problem is, those games used a joystick that only moved in 4 directions. Modern game controllers have 8 way movement, so without intending to, you end up pressing two directions at once, which the game doesn’t understand. As I said, the joystick makes this better, but doesn’t eliminate the problem. I am looking for a 4 way joystick I can use with the device, and sell to my customers, As soon as I find one, I will let you all know.
Here is a link to both devices, for more information.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B077MMFFTG/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new
https://www.frys.com/product/9294639?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG