How to test a fight stick
- Connect the stick with USB and put it in a PC mode (often labelled XInput or PC) if it has a mode switch. Press any button: browsers only reveal a controller after a button press.
- Pick your layout. Vewlix and Astro City are the two common 8-button arcade layouts; Leverless draws a Hit Box-style controller with buttons for directions. Choose the button names you think in: LP MP HP, Tekken's 1 2 3 4, Xbox or PlayStation.
- Press all eight attack buttons and Start, Select and Home, then roll the lever through all eight directions. Each part lights up on the panel and counts towards the report.
- Run the diagnostics that apply to your stick, then tap Share result for a link to the report.
If buttons light up in the wrong places, the browser doesn't know your stick's layout. Click Remap buttons and press each button when it's highlighted; the map is saved in this browser for that stick. Most sticks in XInput or PlayStation mode need no remapping: the top row sends □ △ R1 L1 (X Y RB LB) and the bottom row ✕ ○ R2 L2 (A B RT LT).
Reading the input display
Directions use numpad notation, the shorthand fighting game players use: picture a number pad with your character facing right. 5 is neutral, 6 forward, 4 back, 2 down and 8 up, with the diagonals in the corners (3 is down-forward). A fireball is 236, a dragon punch 623, a half-circle 41236. Set the side to P2 and left and right swap, just as they do in a game when you're on the right.
The input history turns each attempt into one line, like 236HP, with the frames between each step underneath: 2 ·4f· 3 ·3f· 6 ·2f· HP means the down-forward came 4 frames after down, forward 3 frames later, and the punch 2 frames after that. Buttons pressed within 3 frames of each other count as one input (HP+HK). When a line ends with a common motion (quarter-circle, dragon punch, including the 323 shortcut, half-circle, double quarter-circle or a full 360), it's named next to it and ticked off in the list of motions. The tester names the motion the line ends with; a game may pick differently (many read 6236 as a dragon punch rather than a fireball).
The frames held column works like a training mode input display: one row per state, with how many frames it lasted at 60 fps. Use it to see how long your dash steps or plinks really are, or whether a diagonal only appeared for a single frame.
All timings come from the reports your browser receives from the stick. Chrome and Edge read controllers about every 4 ms, so the numbers are accurate to roughly a quarter of a frame, but they aren't the game's own frame data: every game reads input on its own schedule and has its own buffer, so a motion the tester names may still be too slow for a particular game.
The diagnostics
- Chatter is always watched. Microswitches and buttons wear out and start to bounce, sending an extra press you didn't make. A re-press within 15 ms of release, or a press under 10 ms, is flagged, per switch, including the four lever directions (on the leverless layout only the buttons, because SOCD cleaning makes short gaps in directions normal).
- Stuck inputs: hands off for three seconds. Anything still held points to a jammed button, a switch stuck closed or a shorted wire.
- Diagonals: push into each corner from neutral. A lever closes two microswitches for a diagonal; if one closes much later, the lever shows a cardinal first. The check shows how long that gap is in frames and counts corners that flicker in and out, which point to a worn switch, a loose actuator or a restrictor gate that stops short of the switch.
- SOCD, for leverless controllers: hold left, add right, tap a button; then the same the other way round, and again for up and down. The tester reports neutral, last input priority, first input priority, up priority or both passed through.
SOCD rules at tournaments
The Capcom Pro Tour Official Regulations 2026 (v2.00, updated September 21, 2026), rule 4.2.3, say that when up and down, or left and right, are input together, "both inputs must be maintained or both inputs must be rejected": the character must not jump, crouch or walk. Up priority and last input priority don't meet that rule. Capcom first published the same wording for the 2023 Capcom Pro Tour.
Evo's rules say the controller may not send simultaneous opposite cardinal directions, and allow any method that prevents it (neutral, first input priority and last input priority are named) unless a game's pro tour ruleset says otherwise. Stock gamepads are exempt. Hit Box's own SOCD modes page (April 2023) lists its standard mode as left + right = neutral and up + down = up, plus a True Neutral mode.
Always check the rules of the event you're entering. For the controller itself, test the other pads you own with the controller tester, check a keyboard you play on with the keyboard tester, and measure how fast you react with the reaction time test.