Should you’re right here for a misty-eyed ode to chunky grey plastic, you’re within the flawed pixelated neighborhood. This isn’t Retro Nostalgia Hour. It is a chilly, exhausting latency smackdown – the sort you’d count on from somebody who nonetheless retains their SNES controller on their desk, not as décor, however as a each day driver (as a result of, let’s face it, as we speak’s controllers are simply feature-bloated anxiousness machines with Bluetooth points).
Nintendo was sued in 2019 concerning the Pleasure-Con drift. In 2020, it apologized and started repairing them freed from cost. The category motion lawsuits had been lastly dismissed in 2024 after 5 years, partly as a result of the Finish Person License Settlement requires you to go to arbitration, a clause which nobody in 1990 may have understood, not to mention utilized to a tool that you just maintain in your hand to make a plumber soar.
There we are actually. The controller comes with an Finish Person License Settlement, has firmware, features a companion app, encompasses a battery that tattles on itself, and, within the case of the DualSense Edge, has a price ticket of $200. Each fashionable pad desires to be a Swiss Military knife, however finally ends up as a butter knife in a world of steak. Coloration me “not paired.”
It’s nonetheless slower than a Sega controller, which you’ll be able to decide up in a charity store for ten kilos.
It’s not an emotional, nostalgic homage. It’s a specification sheet, and that specification sheet is just not favorable to you. If you press the button, your fashionable wired pad takes about 5 to eight milliseconds to appreciate that you just’ve touched it, whereas all the opposite controllers do higher than that; one in every of them achieves it in lower than a millisecond.
Pace Is A Subtraction Downside, And Fashionable Pads Maintain Including
In 1992, Sega carried out promoting utilizing the time period Blast Processing, a phrase which that they had invented with a purpose to make the Genesis look like sooner than the SNES. This was primarily based on an precise characteristic referring to how knowledge might be fed to the video processor, regardless that no industrial recreation ever made use of it and the one that got here up with the phrase has since publicly apologized for ‘that ghastly phrase’. Though Sega did have an actual pace benefit in that technology, it was constructed into the controller, might be measured, and nobody within the advertising division thought to level this out.
The complete trade will be summed up in that one anecdote: pace is the one that’s marketed whereas latency is incurred, since latency isn’t noticeable till the second it begins to price you.
Every stage between the swap that’s underneath your finger and the chip which reads it entails a delay. The wi-fi pad switches on a radio, establishes a Bluetooth connection, combines sensor knowledge that nobody had requested for, buffers the end result, after which passes it to a driver which experiences it at no matter interval it chooses. Though every of those steps is minor, put collectively they make the distinction between profitable the change and seeing a easy replay of your self shedding it.
The previous ones are profitable since they’re hardly finishing up any motion. The system, when it comes to significance:
There’s a cable, and there’s no various. It’s not a wi-fi pad you could join whenever you’re feeling responsible. The cable is the one alternative, having been soldered in by individuals who had by no means come throughout the time period “pairing mode.”
There’s no firmware and no tips being performed. Since there’s nothing to replace, there is no such thing as a want for an replace. The controller is just not a pc; it’s a set of switches that decide which pins are shorted, and it has by no means required a patch with a purpose to perform this operate.
Polling is synchronized with the video picture; these consoles learn the pad in time with every video body. There’s no argument about 125Hz versus 1000Hz, no want for a configuration file, and no discussion board thread with a locked reply. The console queries the pad as soon as for every body and the pad responds instantly.
Switches that operate this fashion. A microswitch both completes the circuit or it doesn’t. There’s no deadzone adjustment, no drift compensation curve, and no smoothing algorithm quietly modifying your inputs for you.
There are much less elements and due to this fact fewer funerals as nicely. There’s no battery to trigger swelling, no potentiometer to put on down and find yourself in a most well-liked resting place, and no USB-C port ready to interrupt off contained in the casing.
After you have assessed the 5 gadgets, the outcomes listed beneath will now not be shocking and can as an alternative appear awkward.
The Countdown: Fifth Quickest, Then The Undisputed
5. The Sony DualShock 2 (2000)
Probably the most influential of the controllers on this case and the one most extremely rated – each issues – simply put up with it.
Lag: 2.39 milliseconds; the worth used was between 5 and fifteen {dollars}.
All of the pads that you just bought from the 12 months 2000 onwards are merely a nod to the DualShock. They’ve two sticks, 4 shoulder buttons, a D-pad and 4 face buttons. We are able to say that that is the right method since in 2001 Microsoft tried another and launched the Duke, a controller so massive that Seamus Blackley was thrown golf balls at throughout a presentation beside it. Microsoft then changed it inside eighteen months with a tool that, somewhat apparently, resembled a DualShock.
Sony then did one thing utterly uncontrolled by making the whole system stress delicate, with 256 ranges even together with the face buttons. That’s the place I differ from the PS2 fans. Little or no of it was put to make use of. A complete technology of builders bought essentially the most expressive enter {hardware} that had ever been launched right into a front room and adopted it in order that in a racing recreation you possibly can press X tougher. To remove stress sensitivity was not an offence towards nuance; it was a act of mercy.
It ranks fifth on the premise of benefit, and when it’s plugged in it responds about 3 times sooner than your wi-fi pad can full waking up.
The invoice: these sticks are twenty six years previous and drifting, which is a minimum of the trustworthy form of drift—the sort that takes 25 years to point out up, not eight months and a category motion go well with.
4. Nintendo GameCube Controller (2001)
The purple period was delivered to an finish by the worst D-pad that Nintendo has ever produced. The GameCube’s D-pad was so decorative, it may have utilized for a job at Versailles.
Picture Credit: Wikipedia
Lag: about 2.38 milliseconds. Used worth: fifteen to twenty 5 {dollars}, or thirty to forty for a reissue Nintendo retains printing.
For twenty-five years the console was often called a lunchbox and the controller was the one to have the ultimate say. The A button is large, the B button surrounds it, the C-stick is a yellow bump, and the wing grips are nonetheless the most effective handles ever fitted to a gamepad, a undeniable fact that we all know since Nintendo has spent 1 / 4 of a century failing to surpass its personal design.
The actual subject is the triggers. To get an analog studying you must squeeze the set off, and squeeze tougher to supply a mechanical click on which is registered as a separate digital enter. With this setup you will get two inputs utilizing only one finger. Nintendo launched it in 2001 after which quietly removed it. Alternatively, the WaveBird, which was a wi-fi controller, loved individuals’s belief in 2002, an ordinary that Nintendo has managed to fulfill as soon as and has since been caught in a state of limbo.
Now the unpopular half. Smash gamers saved this pad in manufacturing by way of sheer pressure of nostalgia (and possibly denial), and they’re defending muscle reminiscence, not engineering. The D-pad is unusable. “It’s what I grew up holding” is a choice sporting a lab coat.
The bruise: decorative D-pad, fingers aching by hour three, and third social gathering clones starting from glorious to overtly hostile.
3. Tremendous Nintendo Controller (1990)
Third in response to the stopwatch, first by hand. The stopwatch is inaccurate.
Picture Credit: eBay
Lag: roughly 1.48 milliseconds. The value used was between 5 and fifteen {dollars}.
The controller that this one launched is the explanation why mainstream controllers have the shoulder button, so all of the controllers you’ve ever held have copied it with out giving it credit score. People obtained 4 purple buttons whereas everybody else bought crimson, yellow, inexperienced and blue, and thirty six years on the web has nonetheless not utterly settled that subject.
The D-pad has by no means been surpassed. It has not been improved upon or equalled. It’s so correct that in 2026 individuals purchase adapters in order to make use of a part from 1990 somewhat than settle for the one which is at the moment glued underneath their thumb. The 2 entries listed above this one are faster in writing and but neither of them has this functionality.
It additionally falls inside the remaining interval when repairing your {hardware} concerned blowing right into a cartridge, a ritual which achieved completely nothing, that folks nonetheless carried out and which had the next success price than a firmware replace. There was nothing to float, nothing to cost, nothing to pair; simply plug it in and swap it on, and depart it like that.
Small print: it’s completely digital, the size of the cable is precisely as a lot as was determined in 1990 and no centimetre extra, and other people with bigger arms will realise that the shell was designed round a Japanese ten 12 months previous.
2. Sega Genesis 6-Button (1993)
Genesis really carried out what Nintendon’t do. Sega merely marketed the flawed factor.
Picture Credit: Nerdist
Lag: roughly 0.91 milliseconds. The value used was between ten and thirty {dollars}. The buttons included A, B, C, X, Y, Z, and in addition a Mode button for video games that are too fragile to deal with six.
When wanting on the combating recreation increase and contemplating its three-button controller, Sega determined to incorporate the advance inside the similar technology; the replace concerned three further buttons, a greater case, and a response time of underneath a millisecond, in 1993, through a nine-pin connector which got here earlier than USB and was sooner than most units that used it.
Though the advertising division had been arising with Blast Processing with a purpose to win an argument regarding graphics, the engineering group had already received one other argument which nobody else was having; the machine may learn your thumb about six instances sooner than a controller produced this 12 months, the characteristic working at sub-millisecond pace and the pad now mendacity in charity store bins alongside a scratched Sonic 2 cartridge and a lamp with no plug.
The Mode button ought to have its personal part. It’s a {hardware} compatibility swap on the case that you just press in order that previous software program will operate. There’s no want for a patch, no want for a obtain, and no want for somebody to submit in a thread saying “It really works on my machine” after which closing the problem. Only a button.
It’s half a millisecond sooner than the SNES controller when measured over time and fails to beat it on each axis {that a} human can understand. Each of those statements are correct, and thirty years’ value of veterans from the console struggle have all the time been ready to carry solely one in every of them at a time.
The tax is utterly digital and because of this no one who got here alongside after about 1998 is aware of what you need. Six buttons is, to be truthful, 5 greater than the quantity that Sonic has ever wanted.
1. The SNK Neo Geo AES Joystick from 1990
The quickest controller that has ever been produced, when paired with the most costly console that has ever been made: don’t purchase it.
Picture Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Lag: roughly 0.77 milliseconds, with round 95 % of the inputs arriving on the identical body. The value used was between eighty and 100 and fifty {dollars}.
The AES was launched at a worth of $649.99 in 1990; when adjusted for inflation that is equal to about $1,540 now, making it the most costly dwelling console ever launched,a report which it has saved for thirty-six years within the face of decided competitors. SNK’s argument was that it wasn’t a house model of an arcade machine, it was the arcade machine itself, with the identical chips and the identical board, and with no compromises. The stick was included as a result of an arcade machine and not using a management panel can be nothing greater than furnishings.
Which is the explanation for its superiority. Microswitches are rated by the producer for thousands and thousands of operations in conditions the place enterprise loses cash if there’s a stoppage. There isn’t any drift since there may be nothing that may drift. There isn’t any want for calibration since there may be nothing that wants calibrating. Sub-millisecond efficiency isn’t the results of cautious tuning; it’s what a real swap does when nobody has put a radio in entrance of it.
The closing argument, which can annoy all people together with myself, is that you shouldn’t purchase one. A microswitch stick at the moment obtainable will get you as shut as a rounding error to this determine for simply one-fifth of the worth, and it’s primarily based on {hardware} manufactured this decade with a connector that was invented after the Chilly Conflict. Though the AES stick comes out on prime within the record it fails to win the acquisition determination.
A sequel will likely be made anyway. On November 12, 2026 SNK and Plaion launch the NEOGEO AES+ for slightly below 200 euros, utilizing ASICs to copy the unique {hardware} somewhat than emulating it, with 1080p HDMI and ten titles launched on bodily cartridges. The cartridges price about 80 euros every, roughly half the worth of the console. Thirty six years on, and the corporate has nonetheless realized nothing. Fantastic. No additional feedback.
The place it stings: monumental, costly, a stick somewhat than a pad, no analog something, and a proprietary 15-pin connector that wants a Brook adapter to the touch something constructed this century. Nonetheless first. Nonetheless not shut.
Port Authority: How To Not Throw The Benefit Away
It’s with the adapter that the common particular person throws away the entire profit. A thriller converter that prices ten {dollars} can actually introduce extra delay than the controller manages to avoid wasting. You should purchase from somebody who makes public what their {hardware} really does; Brook, Raphnet and 8BitDo are those normally advisable, and sure, the adapter tends to price greater than the pad as a result of the adapter is finishing up the harder job.
Earlier than attributing the issue to the controller, clear the contacts; thirty years of oxidation on a carbon pad is simply the identical as a useless button and will be cured utilizing isopropyl alcohol and ten minutes. The truth that the shell has yellowed exhibits you the place the machine was in relation to a window, not something concerning the situation of the internals, so there’s no must pay extra for one that’s white.
Then repair the precise bottleneck. Your tv is sort of actually including extra delay than each controller right here mixed. Recreation mode on, each processing characteristic with an adjective in its title off. Shaving a millisecond on the pad whereas the TV spends forty on movement smoothing is an costly approach to be ok with your self.
The place The Cable Runs Out
Latency is one axis and this record grades on it solely. Nothing right here has gyro aiming, rumble well worth the title, corridor impact sticks, or wi-fi. 4 of the 5 don’t have any analog enter in any respect, so something constructed after roughly 1999 won’t perceive a phrase of it. Adapters routinely outprice the controllers. Twenty 5 12 months previous sticks drift, shells crack, and cables fray on the pressure aid precisely the place you can not see it.
Play fashionable shooters, purchase a contemporary pad. Play something the place one body settles the argument, plug within the previous one.
