Anyone who plays enough fighting games has come across the thought of “should I invest in a fight stick and become that fighting game player”, to which the answer is always “yes of course, but sticks are too expensive”. With decent sticks usually sitting around $150, 8bitdo has dropped the latest iteration of their fight stick at a palatable $90 price point with a very clean NES inspired design that includes a few extra bells and whistles.
8Bitdo Arcade Stick
Developer: 8Bitdo
Price: $90
Build quality of a fight stick is instrumental. It can’t be too heavy as it has to sit on your lap, but it also can’t be too light since that’d be the tell all sign of a cheap build. The buttons need to feel good since you’re going to be smashing them repeatedly over and over and the joystick also needs to have a tight feel to it. Considering its price point, 8bitdo’s arcade stick has a decent feel to it for the price; it’s very bottom heavy which is good, and the rest of the stick has a sturdiness to it where I don’t have to worry about being too rough with it.
The joystick itself is a bit noisier than I’d normally like, and the buttons feel fine despite having a sort of slight whining noise to them when pressed, but these issues can all be fixed (more on that later). Made specifically for use with PC and Switch, it’s a real bummer to not at the very least have gotten PS4 support as well but it is what it is. I booted up a variety of arcade type games like Streets of Rage 4 and a variety of fighting games and had absolutely no issues with them; the games were able to immediately recognize my stick without any sort of setup. The stick itself even has these super handy LEDs that light up to indicate which button on the stick corresponds to the appropriate button on a controller which changes depending on if you have your stick on PC or Switch mode.
In terms of other features offered on the stick: there’s your standard turbo button, two dedicated macro buttons, and custom software to change button mapping. You can also change what input the joystick serves as, whether a d-pad, left analog stick, or right analog stick. A slight nitpick with the menu buttons is I do wish they were better detailed. They each have an icon indented into them, but it’s all the same color with no depth so they hardly stand out; I actually took a liner pen I use for gunpla models to fill in the outlines which made them pop way better.
Along with this are three connectivity options: wired, 2.4g, and Bluetooth. The stick features a small slot that stores the 2.4g wireless dongle and while a wired connection will always be the preferred way to play for minimal lag, I was impressed with how imperceptible the lag on the wireless dongle was. I do wish there was some way to store the cable as well, but that’s just some incredibly heavy nitpicking when there’s not really any spot to easily store it in the stick.
So the biggest sell of the stick is its “ultra-moddable” nature, with 8bitdo’s own site encouraging you to swap the base parts with other more premium brands like Sanwa. Now while the arcade stick is definitely moddable, it’s perhaps playing it a bit loose with the “ultra” thrown in there. For starters, the stick itself requires a Torx T-10 screwdriver instead of the traditional kind, and not only that but it needs an *incredibly* thin one (I recommend this one). I actually had a few screwdrivers of this type, but they were all too thick to fit in the holes to reach the screws; finding out you have to buy a new tool for the new thing you just bought isn’t the best feeling in the world and why they didn’t use a standard Philip’s screw is beyond me. On top of this, the joystick’s microswitches have their wires soldered onto them, which is no big deal for anyone who knows how to solder (I don’t) and is an intimidating topic to realize you have to research if you bought the fight stick thinking it’d be user-friendly. Thankfully the rest of the arcade stick is easy to customize, with the buttons featuring quick disconnects (that are a bit too hard to remove) but anyone who prefers using screw-in buttons will be disappointed as the casing only supports snap-in ones. The gate comes in and out easily (as it should) and you can also replace the ball which is par for the course. I personally bought some Sanwa buttons and an octagonal gate (to hell with square gate users), which I managed to install with relative ease. It’s definitely an overall easy job to swap everything out, I just wish they were a bit more upfront with the stick’s limitations on the site and perhaps even have a guide for people interested in learning why they should look into replacing the base parts.
For the price and features, the 8bitdo Arcade Stick is definitely worth checking out for anyone interested in getting a bit more serious with their fighting game (or general arcade game) playing. The lack of true “ultra-moddability” is a major disappointment, but the affordable price and welcomed features make the 8bitdo Arcade Stick a worthwhile entry point in the fight stick world.
