Fighting Game Controllers — What Are Your Options?

Fighting games can be a very daunting genre to get into, not only due to the games themselves, but also the seemingly high barrier to entry regarding controllers. There’s a lot of discussion about which form-factor is the best, and it can make it hard to know where to start…

There are three primary controller types that are used in fighting games: Pad, Arcade Stick, and Leverless. I’ll explain each of these in relatively brief detail, go over some pros and cons, and even some good options for each at a variety of price points.

Pad is the most standard offering, as these are, for the most part, just standard controllers. Many professional players play on Pad, oftentimes just using the standard PlayStation 5 DualSense controller. These are probably the best options for an entry-level experience.

Many people will likely have some experience using a standard controller, so the form factor is going to be far more familiar. On top of that, this option generally has a pretty fast general input speed, due to the D-Pad and buttons having very little travel, and for a genre where a single frame can determine your fate, this can be incredibly helpful. The other big positive is the size and general compatibility; it’s super easy to throw a standard controller in a bag and get going where you need to be, without the worry that maybe your controller doesn’t have the right adapter to work on a PS5.

As far as cons go, though, there are a couple. Ergonomically, Pad is the worst option on the list by a country mile. Hand pain was a frequent experience when I was primarily playing on Pad, and it’s not the most comfortable experience overall. The build quality can sometimes suffer with these, too, but this will likely only matter if you really sink in the hours.

There are a few options here, but for the most part, I’d recommend the DualSense in most instances. It’s a generally cheap entry point for solid quality and performance, but there’s a heavy dose of preference here, too. At a slightly higher price point lies the Hori Fighting Commander Octa Pro. While I haven’t used this myself, I can absolutely see the appeal. It’s a fighting game-focused controller, featuring six face buttons, rather than four, which is incredibly handy in six-button fighting games such as Street Fighter. There are also some interchangeable D-Pads, and an analogue stick with an octagonal gate, allowing for far more precision in your inputs.

Next up is the classic Arcade Stick, which has its own plethora of little factors to take into account. The main things are hard to really decide on without hands-on experience, though, such as the buttons, switches, lever, and layout. For example, many people swear by a Korean bat-top lever, while others will exclusively use ball top, but it’s all preference, so customisable arcade sticks are absolutely the way to go here.

Beyond its potential for customisation and expression, there are a lot of other benefits to the Arcade Stick. To the older generations, it’s potentially super familiar, due to its prevalence in the arcade era, and even ignoring that, they’re surprisingly easy to get used to anyway. The sticks themselves are also absolutely fantastic for motion inputs, which is a primary input required in a vast majority of fighting games. Ergonomics are pretty great here too, while some sticks aren’t the best, pretty much everything you find will beat the standard Pad layout in raw comfort, especially over long sessions.

The biggest problems with arcade sticks are simply that they’ve run their course; the sticks have a lot of travel, which makes for typically slower response times, even if you technically react faster. The sticks themselves can make travelling really awkward but a lot of modern sticks have created modular solutions to help with this issue. Unfortunately, though, it’ll never be quite the same ease as a Pad or Leverless.

Thanks to its prevalence, it’s not hard to find Arcade Sticks at a variety of price points, but they are typically on the higher end compared to Pads and Leverless controllers. Mayflash has a lot of cheaper sticks, such as the F101 and F300, which can be good to get a feel for this type of controller, but should really be nothing more than an entry point, as they do feel pretty cheap
compared to their contemporaries. However, there’s a lot of potential for modding these Mayflash sticks, so if that’s something you’d be interested in, they might be some of the better options.

At the mid-point, the Qanba Drone 2 is one I’ve heard fantastic things about, but I unfortunately haven’t got any hands-on experience, and the same can be said about the Qanba Titan at a slightly higher cost.

At the top-end, there are a lot of great premium picks, from the Qanba Dragon, Victrix Pro FS-12, or the Etokki Omni (for the Korean lever fans). There’s a huge and solid base for traditional arcade sticks, and unfortunately, I’m not the most well-versed in these, as I primarily use Leverless. But if I were to pick, it’d be between these three.

Leverless controllers sparked probably the most controversy once they began taking off, for a couple of reasons. They replace the stick with a series of direction buttons, in a couple of different layouts.

These have a couple of major benefits, primarily, the sheer lack of travel time on the buttons. This helps minimise the difference between the time you actually react and the time the input is registered, making a lot of your inputs feel really snappy. Due to the buttons each aligning with a specific direction, it’s also really easy to make far more precise and quick inputs.

One of the biggest things with Leverless is SOCD Cleaning; this is a system that helps to remove input quirks due to the way the controller is built. Unlike on a Stick or a Pad, here you can simultaneously hold opposing cardinal directions — hence SOCD — which would cause some severe issues in certain fighting games. For example, being able to hold left and right at the same time could allow a player to approach and remain blocking, completely trivialising an entire aspect of the game. To solve this, the vast majority of Leverless controllers read a left + right or an up + down input as neutral.

This helps reduce any fundamentally impossible inputs, but it introduces its own unique little quirks, which often can be taken advantage of. This allows for much easier movement in TEKKEN, making the Korean Backdash — a classic piece of movement tech — an absolute breeze to learn via a shortcut that utilises the SOCD system. This isn’t the only example, and either; a lot of different inputs have unique shortcuts that utilise the quirks of SOCD to make them easier, faster, or both.

Leverless isn’t objectively the best, though. It’s an unfamiliar form factor to a lot of players, meaning it’ll be hard to adjust for some. Motion inputs aren’t quite as intuitive either, and larger ones like 360 motions and even some of the really bizarre stuff from older titles can be a nightmare to learn.

Leverless also have a wonderfully diverse set of options at pretty much all prices, and don’t seem to reach the same highs that Arcade Sticks do. At the entry level, Haute42 has a lot of really solid options. I’d recommend any of the T-series offerings, as I started with the T-13, and it was incredibly value for money.

A little further up in cost, Haute42 still manages to be a solid option, with their M16 being a pretty popular pick. There’s also the Punk Workshop Leverless controllers, which I see a lot of very high praise about.

Finally, at the upper end, the biggest competitors are the Victrix Pro KO (my current favourite Leverless), the Razer Kitsune, and potentially the recently released Corsair Novablade Pro. Of the three, the Victrix is my go-to thanks to its customisability and generally fantastic build quality, and I do also really like the Kitsune, but I have a couple of personal gripes which stop it reaching the same heights. The Novablade may be one to keep an eye on, though, as its rapid-trigger switches could be a game-changer for a lot of people.

That covers the basics, but there are a couple of wildcard options too. First off, a keyboard is fundamentally the same as a Leverless controller, simply with a lot of extra buttons. It’s only really viable on PC, but for those who really don’t want to, or can’t invest in a Leverless yet, it’s a solid way to emulate the experience. The final option is to go completely custom; so many places sell kits and individual pieces for building your own custom Arcade Stick/Leverless and there are so many examples of really cool custom pieces — such as Kingyo’s Claimoh Solais Arcade stick.

Fighting games can be a nightmare, but they don’t have to be. The community is fantastic, and once you really start to dip more than a toe into the scene, you’ll find out it’s not quite as daunting as you might think.