8BitDo 64 Bluetooth Controller Review: For Human Hands

The Nintendo 64 was a fantastic console, location to generation-defining games specified arsenic Super Mario 64 and GoldenEye 007. With its 4 built-in controller ports, it revolutionized multiplayer gaming successful beforehand of the TV, and it was the archetypal mainstream console to present an analog stick, indispensable for navigating the burgeoning 3D worlds the mean was starting to deliver.

Unfortunately, the controller it did each that with was an abomination, an unholy three-pronged monstrosity that earned my lifelong disdain. Fast-forward astir 3 decades, though, and third-party peripheral shaper 8BitDo has improved connected the archetypal N64 pad successful astir each mode with its caller 64 Bluetooth Controller.

Nostalgia Upgraded

8BitDo’s pad is chiefly designed for the Analogue3D, an upcoming tract programmable gross array (FPGA) console acceptable to play archetypal N64 cartridges, but it tin beryllium paired to practically immoderate Bluetooth-enabled device, from PCs to smartphones to Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles, wherever it tin beryllium utilized to play the integer N64 crippled room included for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers.

Aesthetically, traditionalists whitethorn lament the deficiency of the archetypal N64 pad’s pops of color, but they person a sleek elegance to them. Intended to reflector the likewise monochrome Analogue3D, 8BitDo’s efforts lucifer perfectly, portion besides looking similar a fitting companion to Nintendo’s authoritative Switch 2 Pro Controller. Functionally, this takes everything that made Nintendo’s archetypal controller truthful groundbreaking and repackages it into a modern portion that, crucially, fits into the mean human’s 2 hands. Every input is contiguous and accounted for, close down to icons and fonts.

The 64 Bluetooth Controller massively improves the orientation, though. The archetypal Z-Trigger, erstwhile connected the underside of the authoritative controller’s mediate prong, is present 2 enarthrosis buttons, sitting wherever the L2/R2 triggers bash connected a PlayStation grip, portion the analog instrumentality is shunted to the left, comparable to an Xbox controller’s near stick. The effect is that each input is wrong casual reach, eliminating the request to juggle your grip. It besides introduces immoderate invited 21st-century upgrades, similar making the thumbstick drift-proof acknowledgment to Hall effect tech, and baking successful haptic feedback, eliminating the request for a abstracted Rumble Pak.

Stick ’Em Up

The thumbstick is the star, feeling incredibly precise acknowledgment to some Hall effect sensors and retaining the eight-way “gate” astatine its base, the octagonal notches allowing it to drawback satisfyingly into place. Expect effortless combos successful 1080° Snowboarding, precise shots successful Perfect Dark, and creaseless flying successful Starfox. The unit of the instrumentality is besides wider, shorter, and made of metal, making it consciousness acold sturdier than that of the archetypal pad. While the apical of the instrumentality reproduces the trio of raised concentric rings and subtle concave dip for your thumb to remainder on, it’s rubberized now, alternatively than slippery plastic, making for a surer grip.