Ladies and gentlemen welcome to our We're here at sub 502. As I was just making a house I'm joined by Viable human Chris Saturn. Hi, Justin. Hi, I'm glad that you remain viable.
I feel like your survivability has never been in question. It's a little bit of question. You think of later it's just going to be joined by human Chris Saturn. This was legal human Chris.
I forgot to mention how it's keeping last episode. We had talked about how we started our own living community. I was going to say that that crash was burned dramatically because turns out the whole Internet. The hosting, well no I wasn't hosting it myself.
Oh, okay. Because I'm not that crazy. But the hosting we need to pay for to get decent a decent streaming platform is expensive. Who would have thought that streaming video in real time would be expensive?
Not me. I tell you. So we're back on Twitch. You know, so just throw that out there if anyone heard that episode.
It's cool. It didn't work out. But the limits been working out and hanging out on our our living community. So, you know, we're there.
We're also in Discord. We don't talk about it a lot on the show, but we're in Discord every fucking day. We talk about it pretty often. Yes, not often enough.
Not as often as we talk on Discord. Come join us in Discord. And you can join us. You can join us.
My week. Yes, sir. I played a little bit of Sniper Elite 4, which is just kind of my like, I want to shoot Nazis in their faces and relax for a little bit kind of game. Okay, yeah.
And I was playing at home and my daughter had happened to walk by and she was like, hey, you playing games? She was like, yeah, she was like, can we play Halo? And I was like, I don't want to play Halo right now. Because she just wants to do one V1 deathmatch Halo all the time.
And yeah, I'm like, you're in third grade. What are you like a 16 year old like gamer dude, like one V1 Halo deathmatch? What is happening? I'm waiting for the station.
No, I don't. I'm waiting on that to happen. I'm like, no, I don't want to fucking do that. I don't want you to run me over with the Jeep 70 times in a row.
So she's sitting there and I was like, let me play one more of this and then maybe we can play some Halo and she sits down to watch it and I was like, you're probably going to want to watch this. She's like, why? And so for people that don't know Sniper Elite has a slow motion x-ray camera for when you shoot a sniper rifle. So like, more combat?
Yes. So the camera follows behind the bullet. It gets close to the guy you're shooting it x-rays the inside of their body and you can watch it like wreck through their guts and bones and stuff. Gross.
Yeah. And it's all in slow motion and it has noises and it's it's the first time you do it, you're like, oh, that's kind of bad. But then you eventually get fully desensitized to the violence. And we're playing it and I shoot a guy and it like tears into him, you know, and x-rays and she goes, oh, no, no.
And I was like, yeah, it's gross. She goes, you hurt that man. I go, it's okay, sweetie. He's a Nazi.
She goes, oh. And then she said there for a couple more minutes and then by the end of it, she was pointing them out to me. She'd be like, over there in those bushes, daddy, shoot that Nazi. That's good.
It's a little bit of a sniper league for. That's some good parenting. I also, um, continuing to try to sort of de-corporatize my computer existence as much as I can. I've been running a network monitor on my phone to see what all I have calling home.
Yeah. And it's a lot. Oh, it's a lot. And so I've been working back and forth, de-blowing my phone and seeing what I have going and tracking traffic and setting up firewalls on my phone to block like weird shit.
Like my home launcher does not need to call home. Yeah, it just needs to launch my apps. Your home screen doesn't need to call home? And it doesn't need to send data to anyone.
I'm sorry. You don't have to. And I remember I had an old Moto X4 because I have a Samsung phone, which means the bootloader is locked and there is no locking it. I know.
And so I took out my old Moto X4 with a shattered screen and I've ordered a new screen for it. I've put linear, I unlocked the bootloader and put linear joes on it. And I don't know if I'm going to switch to it like it's a full-time phone, but it's been fun to break out an old phone and get to kind of play around with unlocked bootloaders and that whole kind of side of Android, which I used to play around with a lot and then just kind of dropped because eventually Android got good enough that you didn't need to run custom ROMs to get shit just a fucking function. So I've been messing around with that and I'm very impressed with it.
I mean, this is the Moto X4. I think the latest Android got was 9. And with the lineage, I'm updated to Android 15, which is quite a bit more recent than Android 9. I know.
And it's running like it's like it's not like I mean, my other phone is like a Z Fold 6. It's like a flagship level Samsung, right? The thing is intensely powerful more than I ever need for a computer in my pocket that I look at gifts of cats on. So I don't want to make it sound like this thing's outperforming it, but like for this is like a seven year old phone.
It's like day to day usable. Every now and then you're like, I just got to take some minutes to load or stuff's a little slow, but it's extremely imminently usable on this little octa core arm with four gigs of RAM. And it's got a headphone jack and an SD card slot and it's water resistant. It's almost like we've always known how to make good devices with features and we just choose not to do it because fuck us.
That's just silly. So I've been playing around with my Moto X4. I still haven't gotten the screen in the mail to do the replacement right now. It's just scotch tape over the front.
I've been playing my daughter's phone for a long time that she used to play because we have the Google Play Pass so she would play video games on it. And now we have her. She had dropped it and shouted the screen and it was cheaper to pick her up like a $100 Samsung than it was to fix the screen of that phone. But at the time was aging, but it's been nice to get to sort of after my failures with Linux, breathe some new life into a device with some open software.
That's good. It has been quite enjoyable. So anyone, if you have a linear JOS compatible device, then if it's getting old, it's a pretty big performance bump over what it was, what it came from. And it was one of the Android one initiative phones, which was supposed to be like minimal bloatware longer term support.
Right. Which they did technically get longer term support. Yeah. It was like, oh, three years instead of one year.
I appreciate that that's finally starting to change because the Pixel 9s, they're saying are like five or six years support or something like that. Finally getting to quasi-reasonable levels. So just sort of playing around with open source stuff and non-corporate stuff and alternative stuff and enjoying hanging out on linear Neo cities on my Moto X4 running lineage. Yeah, normal human things escaping the mainstream internet.
I think that's what I'm doing. It's fair. Can't believe you. Well, you've been up to.
So on that note, I had bought several years ago now. Well, maybe two years ago now. I bought a Samsung tablet because I wanted a tablet to use as an e-reader that had a code screen. Sure.
And I hate Samsung's OS. I hate everything about it. I hate their interface. I hate their interface.
I hate the one UI is that the one? Yeah, it's the one UI. I just hate it so much. I can't stand one UI.
So I'd been keeping an eye out since I got it really for any way to hack it. Because it's difficult to hack at best because of all the lockdown Samsung shit on it. And so I'd been hoping for somebody to come up with some method of hacking it. And finally, the other day I was looking online and I happened to see somebody had full instructions on how to install TWRP, which is the custom bootloader for it.
And so I was very excited. Like finally, we've gotten there and I'm looking at it and I'm like, this is how you install custom ROM and everything. I'm like, great, awesome. Finally, I can ditch Samsung's Shitty OS and install this custom ROM.
And so last night I was following the instructions. I got TWRP running. I wiped the OS. I'm ready to image it.
And then I finished reading it. And it's like, for when the custom ROM is created. So I realized I've completely wiped the OS off of this thing. There isn't an OS review.
It would install on it. So that was a dumb. I should not have done that. Yeah.
So really I just broke my tablet is what I'm saying. What a ride. Yeah. So I could just reinstall the Samsung one, but that feels like defeat.
So I'm just leaving it with nothing on it for now. It's in time out. You're shaming it. Yes.
It's in time out until it creates itself a worthwhile OS. I had forgotten that until I was looking at you just website that every pixel has an unlock bootloader. Oh, yeah. I don't know why I always forget that fact.
I was like, yeah, a lot of pixels have unlock bootloader. And I was like, oh, yeah, they all just are having a lot of Google. Google unlocks them by default. Yeah.
Google doesn't walk in that down, which is nice. Despite the fact that Google is an advertising company, they will let you remove all the advertising from their phones. But what they won't do is give you a fucking headphone jack. Why would you need that?
I still use it. I still use it with 20th century technology. Is that what you're using it with? Yes.
I'm using a headphone port from the 1900s on my device is still centered. All right. I got some cost port of pros. I like to plug them in.
I like to have a I have my bone conducting here. Earphones that I use. Those are nice. I've got blue too.
I got some Galaxy Buds Pro and I've got other pixel buds pro. I've got headphones. Yeah. I like those.
They're typically metal band topped over the ears foam ear pad. Cost the headphones, the headphones I use in my car are USB C connection. Well, they're not headphones, but the connection to my car. I got to convert it, but what if I charge this with any time?
What's that? I said, I've got a converter from three and a half to USB C, but what if I want to charge at the same time? You can use wireless charger. I also don't like.
We just have a good battery. This is one of my weird complaints, but strap in because there's going to be more of these later. But I hate that the plug then comes out of the center of the phone because it feels weird in my pocket because headphone jacks are always on one of the sides. Whenever in the middle, that's a dumb place to put a jack that's going to have a chord dangling out of it.
Okay, that's a really dumb complaint. Yeah, I told you. So, no, aside from me breaking my tablet, I started playing queasenier or cuisineier. I'm not sure how they want me to announce it.
Queasen art? Yeah, it's a queasen art, but no. So it is a, I pick up the Xbox version, but it's not everything. It is a game where you, it's like a mix of Hades and restaurant simulator with a touch of harvest moon in there.
Yeah, I'm looking at the tags on Steam. Action, roguelike, cooking, anime, casual art. Yeah, that's about right. So you play as a character who inherits her parents' restaurant, but she doesn't know where to get ingredients, so she keeps going in the dungeons for them.
And you kill sentient peppers to get spices for your restaurant. And there's these weird little bouncing chicken heads that you can get chicken and eggs for your restaurant. It's basically just like you're alive. Yeah, it's a based on true story.
No, it's very cute. My biggest complaint with it is one. It does the whole harvest moony thing where it tracks what day of what season it is and every time that you do something, time progresses and so you're time limited on everything, but it doesn't seem to have any like hard limits of when you have to get something done by so I'm willing to ignore it. But the other bigger complaint I have with it is its art style is just kind of this generic anime art style.
It's very anime. However, the characters are all like proportioned like they are child anime characters, but they have fully developed breasts and that's disgusting and I don't want it. I need them to take that back. No, that toothpaste is never going back in that tube.
I've just decided that I hate a lot of things. I hate it so much. Every time that it shows the full sized character art when somebody's talking, I'm like, nope, take that away. I don't want any of that.
That's weird and gross. Yeah. I don't know who decided that was in all the dudes are like super giant and muscular to where like one of the first ones. I was good.
I was good. I was good. I was good. I was good.
I was good. I was good. I was good. I was good.
I was good. I was good. I was good. I was good.
I was good. I was good. I don't want to upset any anime fans. I enjoy anime.
I watch anime. Yeah. I like anime. But I've never really loved things that lean really hard into anime tropes.
And I think what I've decided in maybe well, I think what I've decided maybe anime fans will show up and correct me is that I think a lot of the allure is that so much of it is tropey and you get to walk in the front door with a full set of expectations that will be met according to the tropes that you've already identified ahead of time. That's my that's my my amateur guess is where I am. I'm okay with most anime tropes except for the weird sexual ones. Yeah.
If we could like tone those down like right right now they're like a seven and I need like a three. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do sometimes third and eleven.
Let's do some news. Yeah. First up Nintendo will allow guests to the Nintendo hotel at University of Japan to rent an alarmo to use during their stay. Notice I said rent.
Yes. This is the Nintendo hotel at University of Japan. They will allow you the privilege of paying them more money. You're already renting the room for their special alarm clock.
Yeah. Just put it in the fucking rooms do why you got a rent it for like what you only got like 20 of them you got to keep them behind the desk. Maybe they want people to put in a deposit so they know who has which one. The one just go you're missing.
I like that. I mean I don't know if the whole thing is bizarre. Like it would have been cooler if they were like oh the rooms will have alarm. They're like oh that's cute but like you're checking in you know you just got off your 20 hour flight to University of Japan and they're like do you want to rent an alarm clock?
No I have a phone. Yeah. So I'm good. All right.
I don't need Pikmin to wake me up for extra money. I wonder how much it is. Like that's what I'm curious about. I feel like $20 like that's insane.
I'd be curious to see. Fans remade the early stages of Super Mario World in 3D using Unreal 5. I saw this and it's cute. It is very cute.
It's very cute. More of that but of course much more and they'll get hit with the C&D I'm sure although they may already be at threat of that so right what the hell really knows. The ESA has announced I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's supposed to be icon but I've been calling it Eye Icon.
I've also been calling it Eye Icon which is the stupid and I feel that it deserves to sound stupid. Interactive innovation conference which just sounds like E3 again and it also sounds like they couldn't think of a third I word because I feel like they wanted to call it I3 but then they're like there's only two words that start with the letter I see I feel like they didn't to call it i3 because they didn't want the relation to e3 because that failed and they're trying to rebrand. Okay. All right.
I feel like this is their intentional pivot away from e3. Maybe. Maybe. Nagarasho will be April 26th.
Or, pardon me, April 2026 in Vegas. To have they said if this is like this is going to be an industry event or just yeah. Okay. It's basically just e3 again.
This is a trade show. All right. So why not call it i3 because they e3 failed. They don't want to be associated with it.
They only failed because they fucking ruined it. Yeah. They failed too. Yeah.
Wario lane four has been added to Nintendo Switch Online plus plus which I presume will get more letters and symbols once the switch to comes out. I'm starting to think the only reason they called it the switch to is so they wouldn't have to spend the money to rebrand Nintendo Switch Online. Nintendo Switch Online and Nintendo Switch Online plus plus with expansion pass. Yeah.
Possibly. Wario Land 4 is a good game though. Now if people haven't played Wario Land 4, it's good. All Wario Land's are pretty darn good.
Worth playing. Bloodborne PS1 DMake creator has been hit by Sony with a DMCA takedown that's on back of them taking down the 60fps mod. Yeah. Last time it hopefully like you said, it means that they're coming out with something bloodborne related.
Yeah. It could just be them being lit today's ass all soon. You know, it's hard to say. They would never do that.
But the PS1 DMake up bloodborne has been going on for a while. Like this is not like early days. You know, this one's been around for a minute. So it's got to be extra years.
So that we've been hearing about it at least. Yeah. So extra upsetting to the the yeah. Looked it up.
Bloodborne PSX is 2022. Yeah. It's been a fucking minute. That sucks.
Right. I lost my place. Square Enix showed off a chunk of theme scene deck. Saturn wrote looks fucking disgusting is what he wrote.
I thought it looked great. Oh, can you imagine how gross that's going to get my favorite to someone in the comments was like, it looks like it's the ChocoBos asshole and you're staring into it to play Final Fantasy 7. I believe they said that it looks like the Chloe, which is more medical. Right.
Pardon me. The medically accurate ChocoBos. And I think they're right. I do see a beak coming out the bottom, but it does look like it is the asshole grabbing the hips and just staring square into that Chloe.
Yeah. Um, you know, this is a gross looking controller. It's going to get so gross when somebody gets even slightly sweaty with it. Oh, no, to be to be to be clear, this was like a fun one off like marketing stuff.
They're not selling these. It's not nothing of the sort. I think they showed it running F of seven rebirth. They're running.
It was running running one of the F seven remade games. I presume it was rebirth. Anyway, embrace a group has spun off as many as per their previous plans to split into three companies. I'm happy about this one.
As many is one of the largest, if not the largest tabletop games company in the world. Now, embrace are still maintaining a bit of ownership of it. Right. You're at the split off, right?
But that's my understanding. No. But having Asmadi getting to operate independently again and not being completely controlled by embrace or from the top is nice. Although Asmadi was already kind of like the shitty corporate tabletop company.
And so, you know, is what it is. But they publish a huge amount of board games. So nice to see that they're not going away, which would be devastating to the tabletop history. Warner Brothers Discovery says their video game division lost $300 million last year.
Maybe they should spin off Atari again. Maybe they should fucking try harder. That's my thought. I know it's just shocking.
They also announced that they were canceling that multiverse game that they tried to make as the Smash Brothers clone. I was shocked they maintained that as long as they did, to be honest. Well, it was free to play for a long time. But a bunch of people did buy $100 creators packs or whatever for it.
And they're getting nothing out of it, apparently. So, yeah, well, you gave money to Warner. So, you get that out of it. Just what you got to play is Shaggy versus Scorpion.
I hope you're happy. Scorpion would annihilate Shaggy. Turns out it's not always. That does even make sense.
I know. Valve has banned games that make their money the forced ads. Turns out this is not actually a new policy for whatever reason it popped back up in the news feeds recently. But it is a policy that Valve has that you cannot have forced advertisements where like, oh, you died if you watch this ad, you can respond in your game on Steam, which good that that's how that should be.
Yeah, I wish every store front should do that. All companies should have that policy. A new survey from Consumer Reports says that 14% of Americans still play games on platforms released before the year 2000. Those old blocky games.
I'm going to say a follow up survey that I'm doing right now says that a majority of the survey respondents from Consumer Reports are fucking old. This is true. If you're under 40 and you respond to Consumer Reports surveys, please write in. Yeah, let us know.
Also, if you're under 40 and listening to the show and respond to a Consumer Reports survey, we would really like to know who you. And if you also want to weigh in on anime tropes, if we can just find the person that that Venn diagram is a perfect circle, at least one of them out there. Yeah, it's nice to see this that, you know, Richard gaming is still relevant. What's weird to me is it's only 14% and the retro collectible market is in such an inflated state.
Well, that's just specifically playing games on the hardware from that era, not the entire retro gaming market. Right, I'm just saying that for that number to be that low, I guess what I'm trying to get around to. I think that numbers too high. Oh, yeah, I think that number is very inflated.
I think there's far less than 14% still playing on hardware from a 40,000. I don't know, man. There's no way it's that high. Really interesting.
I would have said opposite that that feels low. If it was that high, the prices would be 10 times what they are now. Because you have to remember 14%, that's more than 3 million people in the US. True.
No, that's more than 30 million people in the US. All right, that's a bigger number. Yeah. And a lot of those in the games only printed a couple of 100,000 copies of that.
We're having a lot of our low G man. So I'm saying the more successful ones printed a few hundred thousand copies, a lot of the less successful ones printed like 10,000, 20,000 copies, if that. Like there's 30 million people all trying to get them, that'd be exorbitant. That's true.
That's true. You've used the power of math to persuade me. The SEC has confirmed that they are actively investigating Roblox, but won't go into details at this time. Why did you wait so fucking long, Roblox?
Or I mean, SEC. Roblox has been doing all sorts of changes for a long time. Leaks imply the investigation may include inflating metrics to mislead investors and lax safety measures regarding protecting children from predators. What not Roblox?
I think the first half of that sentence probably explains why it's taken on this long. Yes, they finally are misleading investors and that was what got their attention. Hopefully this leads to some reform. What's weird to me is I've never seen anyone play Roblox.
Anybody in person that says they play Roblox? Insanely popular. Oh yeah, like a ridiculous like blowout level popularity. I know you will watch people playing Roblox on Twitch for like six hours of the time.
It doesn't compete with other games. It competes with whole other platforms. Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, we'll see what comes out of that.
State of Play happens. There's a new lizard cube developed shinobi game and a bunch of other stuff. But mostly a new lizard cube developed shinobi games. That's exciting.
Lizard cube did the Wonder Boy remakes several years ago. Streets of Rage 4. Almost ten years ago. That came out.
Oh my god. No, I... GOG is delisting their unique version of Daggerfall. I forget what makes their version of unique, but you could have gotten it for free for a while.
And there are some things specific to the GOG version that's different than the version that you get in other places. If you're listening to this now, then it's already gone. So I hope you got it. And it's been delisted from GOG.
Oh, of course. I have it in my GOG library somehow. It was free for a while. I think it was probably free for a while.
Yeah, so that's probably heading up. That's how I just looked it up. I just looked it up a lizard cube's remake of Dragon Trap. It'll be eight years old next month.
Oh my god. Yeah. And finally, Hudson's 2006 SimCity mobile game has been preserved as part of an ongoing project to preserve Japanese feature phone games. I am glad because I like feature phone games.
I played some feature phone games. And even at the time, I was like, man, these aren't going to be gone in a couple of years. And not too many of them even released outside of Japan. So many of them were Japanese exclusive.
Yeah, there were the people that weren't around in there. Feature phones were a much bigger deal in Japan. It's I feel like more powerful over there than they were over here. We got shitty ones.
I mean, we still got feature phones, but the idea of using the features on a feature phone. Yeah. We seem to catch on more in Japan. A lot of people here like they'd have a feature phone.
They didn't do feature phone shit on it. They just did phone calls and texting. I had a bunch of other games somewhere. Oh, me too.
Yeah. I remember I played the shit out of the feature phone splinter cell game. I had Mega Man 2 on my feature phone. I had some Castlevania game that I think was custom built for it.
And I had Silent Hill on there, which was a weird spin-off Silent Hill game that has never been released. There are a few weird feature phone specific versions of like well-known games. It's a very weird era. But the game that I played the most on there was for some reason Monopoly here and now edition.
All right then. Okay. My ex-bot on my phone on a whim when I wasn't looking. Yeah.
She didn't realize that that was a real marketplace. And then once I had it, I was like, oh, I can just play Monopoly while I'm sitting in the car. All right. I can hate my life anywhere now.
Which brings us to our topic at hand. Yeah. Which is our last episode is kind of a remaster of an early episode we did. This episode is the fourth, fourth controller's episode.
And it is my popular demand. Yeah. Mind you, we were constantly asked when are we doing another controller's episode? And at first we were like, ha, ha, ha, what a silly funny joke that you people are making.
No, no, no, no, no. And then we did another one. They mean it. They're like, no, we'll listen to y'all talk about controllers all day long.
This is controllers for Saturn Road. This time it's personal. We've couched it in. Hold on, hold on.
I put this time it's personal opinion. Okay. It's our personal opinions about controllers. I think this was originally couched in a top 10 list of some sort.
Yeah. But as the notes went on, that fully degraded. For synopsis, you wrote, if we talk about controllers at less than 55 words per minute, the bus will explode. And I wrote get ready for us to say eight bit dough about 1000 times.
Oh, they insisted it's pronounced eight bit do they're wrong. They're very wrong. It's eight bit dough. I think they're trying to be legally distinct from Nintendo.
I'm pretty sure they are. We had a survey on our discord like four years ago where we asked people to weigh in on that and everybody agreed that it is eight bit dough. Yeah, there you go. So here we are.
More controller talk. It's this one is just all opinions. We've broken them down into categories that I loosely or very often just didn't follow. So basically it's going to be roughly 20 to 30 minutes of us just discussing controllers.
Maybe we played on that dreamcast control. For first impressions, let's see, I wrote the dreamcast controller is a war crime. And you wrote that I'm a wrongy with big hands, which is accurate. I like your statement.
I'll accept that. I'll accept that. I wanted to start with this because this is the most recent controller I believe we've both purchased. You talked about it recently, but I want to have a small break to talk and just kind of have a review of Hori's steam controller.
Yeah. I'm still enjoying because I got one too. We have to talk about it. And so for people don't know, this was Hori's controller.
They released it was really just in Japan for a little bit in the came to the States. It is kind of mostly your standard controller, which you talked about in your review a little bit. You're at your base buttons, your four trigger buttons, you got your two back paddles, your two front programmable buttons. I really enjoy because I use the steam controller overlay all the time.
And being able to reprogram my buttons in the steam controller overlay because it recognizes the programmable buttons is very nice. Oh yeah, I like that a lot. A lot of more control over them because you don't just have to have them mirror a different controller, a different button or whatever. I will say it's very comfortable in the hand.
Build quality leaves a little to be desired. Kind of the seams and finish are a little cheap feeling, but it's it's ergonomically on line, but could just be luck of the draw. It is very, very, very light. Yeah, I mentioned that last time.
And I it's because it has no rumble. There's no rumble in this thing. Yeah, I wasn't sure if it had like I hadn't noticed rumble, but I wasn't ready to say definitively that it didn't have it last time. There's no rumble in this thing.
And I dislike that. I like rumble's one of those things where like I like it when it's there when it's not there. I might not notice it, but when it is there, I do notice it and I do appreciate it. So that one's kind of a loss for me depends on the game.
They're games where I just want to turn rumble off. We have other games where I'll use it pretty extensively. There's some games where the rumble bothers me. I've had some Bluetooth controllers kind of freak out and they'll rumble for too long, which this is an issue in case I forget to mention it on my eight-bit dough ultimate controllers every now and then when they rumble, they'll rumble for 20 consecutive seconds and then just stop and not do it again for three months.
Yeah, there's some games I've noticed, especially games that were originally designed for PS5 that when they get ported to PC, they have awkward rumble support and it'll just end up rumbling forever for no reason. It's very weird. My point is having no rumble means it's very light, which it makes it feel extremely cheap, but it also makes it really light in the hand. I play a lot with my Xbox Elite 2 and that thing's heady as shit.
It's like holding a brick. So it can get fatiguing like heavier controllers and this is very like you don't notice at all. The weight is non-existent, which is nice. It does have gyro, which I did not have a chance to test because gyro sucks.
I don't like it. I'm slowly coming around to gyro in certain applications. I do like the face buttons on it. I like that they're not that very slick, shiny acrylic that Xbox controllers have, which can get a little tacky feeling when my hands are getting sweaty or whatever.
Don't have that issue. Yeah, well, whatever. I also like the triggers on it. The triggers are very much like Steam Deck feeling triggers.
They're not very deep. They feel kind of... They are analog. They are analog.
Yes, but they're kind of shallow, which I've come to really appreciate more shallow triggers. I mean, it does have a little toggle that'll let you turn on digital triggers if you so choose. Yeah, on my Xbox Elite, I usually flip it to the shallowest because the trigger depth is adjustable, and I'll often switch it to the shallowest because it's pulling a trigger all the way in, feels kind of uncomfortable on games where you're doing it over and over and over and over again. It does not like Windows doesn't like it.
I think it's an SDL controller instead of X input. You can switch to X input. There's a toggle on the back. Right, but X input is only for wired mode.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, so you can do X input, but it's got to be wired if you're doing wireless it's SDL, which Steam is fine with, but it means that if you just want to go fire up a God game without the Steam overlay, it's not going to interpret your controller correctly, most likely. I'm just using it on my Steam Deck, so it's not a concern on my end. I did find it weird that it includes a dongle, and I was like, oh, it's 2.4 gigahertz.
This is great because my computer is behind my TV. It's a desktop machine. It's stuck behind my TV, and the Bluetooth on it is a little iffy because it's going through a TV and it's a little tiny, little nubbin dongle. This included a dongle.
The dongle is just literally a generic Bluetooth dongle. It's a generic Bluetooth adapter. Yeah, like why did you include this? Like who's buying a controller in 2025 and is like, I need a Steam controller, but I don't have a Bluetooth.
Very weird. Unfortunately, Bluetooth range has gotten much better. I can have something sitting at the other end of my apartment and still access it from my car outside. So it's getting better.
It's not as big a video. Not for me. Bluetooth range on this was not usable for me. I had to move my Bluetooth dongle in front of my television because I was getting mis-inputs.
Oh, weird. Yeah, I can bring this into the bedroom and still get a good signal on it from the living room. Well, granted, it's going literally straight through my TV, so that's probably not helping it. But overall, I would happily pay like $10 to $15 more for a version with a 2.4 gigahertz dongle and rumble and x-input.
If it had those things, this would be like top notch control. It does have x-put, just only wired. Yeah, but it might as well look, if you're going to make me plug my wired controller in in 2025. Now, on my Windows machine, I only use wired controllers.
No, no, no, no. If it had those things, wireless x-input, rumble and 2.4 gigahertz, this would be like, I would put everything in a box. I would be using this thing. I will say if all you ever use this Steam, like you're like, I only do PC gaming and Steam.
I never do anything else anywhere else. And you don't mind missing out on rumble. It's still kind of worth the price tag, but just barely for me. It's not like a top-notched controller.
It's just like, it feels kind of cheap. It's missing a couple features I'd really like to have that aren't quite deal-breakers, but aren't far from it. And it's really good in Steam. Mine is being used exclusively as a controller for my Steam Deck Windows in Doc Mode, and it is excellent for that.
Yeah, if you're looking for something for that, and again, you don't mind missing out on rumble, then I would say that's a very good application for it. Absolutely it is. I wanted to kind of bitch about the $50 price tag, but $50 is cheaper than OEM controllers by like still $20. Yep.
And it has almost as many features. So like actual feature to price tag ratio, I think is with the inflation of where things are now pretty reasonable. Yeah, I might as well like just buy a generic ass controller for $7. Oh yeah.
But from where I'm sitting, like this would be like in-game for me if they would tack on about $15.20 worth of features onto it, then you'll be like, I'm over. So I really hope they come out with like a revision of this. I really like to see that. That's fair.
Yeah. Let's get into our categories. Okay. First up is OEM controllers.
A definition, first party controller is for any console, not required to come bundled with the console itself. And I'm going to let you go first here. So I'm going to go with the modern Xbox controller. I specifically put the Series XS controller, but really the Xbox One controller is practically identical.
Sure. It's comfortable. It's got that nice grip on the back on the Series X version anyway. And it just doesn't try to do anything weird.
And also it still takes batteries. So I don't have to worry about charging it all the time. And if it's battery dies, I can just immediately put new batteries in it. So I'm having to find a cord or angle myself to fit into a charger or whatever.
And also just it's widely compatible with all kinds of shit, which is very nice. I can use it on my phone. I can use it on my computer. I can use it on whatever.
So it's nice. I am a fan of also the D-Pads on both the Xbox One and the Series XS controller are very nice. So I'm a big fan of all that. I also gave my OEM controller pick to the Xbox controller.
It was a tough contender because I do like the Switch Pro controller quite a bit. The battery life on it is insane. And I'm on record as loving the big flat round matte face buttons on it. But compatibility won out for me.
I put nearly any Xbox controllers when I put I specifically the Series X controller for the reasons you said I love the texturing on it. It's widely compatible. But I'll even go so far back as the 360 controller. Like in general, the design and compatibility of most all Xbox controllers since the 360 has been D-pad on the 360 controller, man.
You know, I remember so many complaints about 360 D-Pads and I never minded it. I hated it. I never did. I'd gotten that special edition 360 controller with the rotating D-pad that would lose its circle.
So it was just a cross. And I used the shit out of that one. That was my favorite. Xbox controllers are almost they're almost boring.
They're almost so ubiquitous that it's just like boring. It's the default it has become the default icon of what you know. If you're gonna put a picture of a controller, a controller emoji probably looks like an Xbox controller. And also any games on mobile or on PC that just want to use generic controller inputs.
Yeah. Almost always use Xbox controller icons. Yeah, for sure. What's your honorable mention for favorite OEM controller?
I'm gonna go with the DualSense. I was going back and forth between DualSense and Switch. But I'm gonna go with the DualSense just because the adaptive triggers are just the resistive triggers rather super nice. The rumble on it is super super nice.
I actually like the rumble on it slightly more than on the Switch Pro controller. The complaints I have about it are the lack of replaceable battery and also the built-in battery lasts like 40 minutes or whatever. Yeah. And the speaker is just way too fucking loud on it.
Fortunately, you can change the volume on it's still way too fucking loud. Yeah. And I don't I'm not in love with the touchpad but I do appreciate that it does have like pretty much everything that a modern controller should have built into it and also a stupid touchpad. Yeah.
So at least it's not taking something to put it in there. Yeah. So it's a it's a nice and it's got a good weight to it and it feels premium when you hold it. Even if you know it's a I still feel that it I fear that it's not going to last super super long.
Likewise, but it is. It look that really all the PlayStation 5 hardware from the console controllers look like things that 10 years from now are gonna be like yeah then hold up good. Right. I'm worried about that but it does feel very nice in the hands.
It's comfortable and in a place well. So I'm going to go with that. My honorable mention for favorite OEM controller was the GameCube controller. I did keep the game about that.
It's quirky but all of the quirks on it are interesting and fun. I will say so with the GameCube and PS2 and Xbox I was like 11 12 when they were like hitting the market and I remember it being a problem but I'm switching between different legends on the front of these controllers all the time because I go to my friends houses and I play their playstations and then and then all right go I want my friends at a PlayStation other than the GameCube and then eventually I had all three and I remember vividly having different shaped face buttons not only is a fun idea but also helped me with kind of mentally mapping the controller. To this day I will still occasionally on a PlayStation layout have to look down and go what the fuck is square again? I have a grown 36 year old man.
I don't know what part of my brain I need to not be stupid in this way but I don't have it. The GameCube controller is the only one where I still have to look down when I'm using it. Never ever because I never remember which one is X and which one is X and the GameCube controller. It never I'm fine with it.
I love the GameCube controller it is super comfortable. It's a great controller my complaints with the GameCube controller today are still my same complaints that I had then. The D-pad. Is it the baby D-pad?
No it's not even the D-pad I can deal with the D-pad it's not great but it's all right. My complaints are the imbalanced shoulder buttons now there's a Z on the right but not on the left. Oh that's a weak complaint all right so any games that do use both bumpers and both triggers has to remap something somewhere else and also not being able to click in the analog sticks. Never would have occurred to me.
I mean if I'm playing Granite GameCube control is unique enough that if you're using it you're using it on a GameCube but I can't imagine. Well the thing is back when the three systems are still current. Sure. I would tend to try to get things on GameCube when I could but then I would get them home and if it was a multi-platform game it was on all the different systems.
It would have weird controls because the controller was different. It was having to remap whatever it had already done on PS4X. Also select button either which is another exactly. Which not as many games you select at least not as heavily as they would other buttons so I was willing to look over that but it's just missing enough inputs compared to its contemporaries that there were occasionally problems with that.
I found the gameCube still so comfy. My complaints with it are deepads a little small. I'm with you. I'll tolerate it.
It's a little small. Also the controller the triggers are almost a little too deep so like anything using lots of trigger presses can kind of wear your fingers out but beyond that ergonomically it's so insanely comfy. It was good for games that really did take advantage of analog stuff. Absolutely yeah you got a ton of range of motion on that you can really pinpoint it.
Like if you're playing a racing game and you wanted to use it as a foot pedal it gave you a ton of analog sensitivity there. Category 2 is third party controllers. My pick was the A-bit though ultimate. This is my go to third party controller.
I was on the pro 2 for a long long time but I made the move to the ultimate and I find myself struggling to go back to the pro 2. It's it effectively honestly feels like an Xbox controller. It's 2.4GHz and Bluetooth. As far as I know all of them come with a charging base which is really nice.
I love having a charging base for any controller. It makes it so much more convenient. It's got USB-C charging. They also sell alternate face buttons on their website.
So my two. You can talk them out. Yeah my two didn't match. One of them was a Nintendo face button because it was the regular ultimate and the other one was the ultimate with Bluetooth and it had Xbox layout and so I ordered the buttons and then just remapped the controller and their software and then pop the faceplate off and change other buttons.
It's got back paddles. I love controllers that have back paddles especially programmable ones. I've gotten very accustomed to having those. My only one got anything.
I use them all the time. All the time. My only complaints are that programming it you do have to use their software. I can't do it in like a steam overlay or whatever because it doesn't recognize the programmable buttons as discrete buttons which is kind of a pain in the ass which means you're not doing it on the fly.
But it still has to have the option available. It's just it is everything I want. You know I still prefer and use 2.4 gighertz on. I can just because I move my controllers between different machines a lot and not having to repair Bluetooth.
It's just an extra little thing that I can skip having to do by just plugging the shit in. It's really become kind of my standard go-to controller like this. This is what I'm going to use on everything that it will let me. I was actually tempted here but I actually caved in and used that on a later entry.