Custom peripheral maker Hit Box recently revealed the Smash Box, a custom-built Smash Bros. arcade controller that’s basically a GameCube controller with buttons instead of sticks.
The folks at Hit Box believe that fingers on buttons grant more precise control over fighting games. They have already released a Hit Box controller for the Xbox One (with preorder open for a PS4 version), with a YouTube channel full of videos demonstrating how four buttons take the place of a directional pad.
Note the final version of the controller may look different.
The Smash Box is like the Hit Box, only with a bunch more Sanwa Denshi arcade buttons. Four each for the analogue stick, d-pad and the GameCube controller’s unique C-stick. Along with the face and shoulder buttons, that’s a whole lot of tapping.
Along with precision, Hit Box’s Shawn Huffer tells Kotaku there are health benefits to going all buttons as well.
“Turning a pad into a sort of a keyboard/arcade hybrid is way better for ergonomics too. Smash Bros Melee has sort of a carpal tunnel epidemic going on as eSports drives the game to get more and more input heavy and hardcore, so Smash Box is designed to help prevent players from burning out their wrists as well.”
Here’s how it all comes together.
Hit Box plans on launching a Kickstarter for the Smash Box soon, so stay turned to their website if you’re interested in swapping out your knobs.
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3 responses to “A Smash Bros. Arcade Stick, Only Without The Stick”
For the target audience of this thing, hardcore competitive folk, it needs to prove itself in comps before anyone will bite.
Many people have tried to go down this road in the past, and while some cool teching can come of it, the pad always wins out overall.
Are the analogue buttons pressure sensitive? Smash Bros actually uses the analogue stick quite a bit. It can be lightly tilted for walking or ‘smashed’ to the side to trigger the smash attacks. The C-buttons can do the latter for the basic smash attacks but what about the special side attacks that can have different inputs?
It might be a Wii remote-like setup, where you double tap the directionals to do a smash? I really wish they let you use that scheme with the classic controller instead of just making the d-pad do the friggen taunts. Sakurai pls.