8BitDo Arcade Stick Tester

Set it up for the test

The 8BitDo Arcade Stick has two switches on its top panel. The mode switch picks Switch mode or XInput, the mode for Windows; for this test, set it to X. In XInput mode, Shacknews found the stick “exposes it as a XInput controller”, essentially a wired Xbox 360 controller to the computer, so the browser should recognise its layout without remapping. The second switch makes the lever act as the D-pad, the left stick or the right stick. The tester reads all three, so try each position and confirm the numpad display follows the lever.

Connect it with the USB cable, over Bluetooth or with the 2.4G receiver, then press any button. A cable takes the wireless link out of the picture, so if something misbehaves, try that first.

What the panel shows

8BitDo lays out its eight buttons in the Vewlix arrangement, with the first column slightly lower than the other three (as Engadget describes it), so the panel above opens in Vewlix with Xbox names: X Y RB LB on top and A B RT LT below, the usual order for Xbox fight sticks. If a button lights up somewhere else, click Remap buttons. The stick’s labels are lights that change with the mode, and the panel’s names don’t: if you’d rather read LP MP HP or Tekken’s 1 2 3 4, change the button names above.

Testing the extras

P1 and P2 play back macros, so they show up as the recorded inputs in the history, with the frame gaps the stick plays them at. The Turbo button changes how other buttons repeat: hold a button with turbo on and the history shows the repeated presses, which the chatter table may flag as double presses. That’s expected, so run the chatter check with turbo off.

After a mod

The stick is built to be modded: 30 mm and 24 mm Sanwa and Seimitsu buttons fit, and the lever can be replaced with some soldering. After a swap, press every button a few dozen times and watch the chatter table, then run the diagonal check: a new lever or a different restrictor gate changes how quickly the corners register, and a loose quick-disconnect makes a switch flicker.

The button map on this page

The panel above opens in the Vewlix layout. In XInput or PlayStation mode, a stick reports each button under the W3C standard gamepad number below. If yours lights up the wrong button, it uses another order: click Remap buttons and press each one when it’s highlighted.