A company called 8Bitdo just sent us two Bluetooth controllers that look like they belong with the NES and the Famicom and we’re going to take a look at them today. Not only do they have that retro aesthetic of an original NES and original Famicom controller but these things kind of add a lot more to just your basic NES gamepad experience. You've got a basic NES D-pad which works really well and it's got the nice roll to it that you'd want from a real NES D-pad. It also has B, A, X and Y half of which you wouldn't have seen on an original NES controller, you have your Start and Select which are common and then you've got two little thumb sticks that can also be pushed in for additional input. Then on the top you have L1 and L2 and R1 and R2 buttons so that you can have just extra additional functions for whatever game you're playing. This is pretty neat because you'd think that this controller would suck because it looks like they threw way too much stuff onto it but it doesn't. In fact with an original NES controller when you hold on to those things they've got that box design so after a while your hands feel uncomfortable but what they've done here is they've rounded everything off so it feels really good in the hands. This is incredibly impressive because I didn't expect this controller to feel and handle so well.
Both these controllers here are incredibly well manufactured and from a build standpoint amazing quality stuff you wouldn't expect. Now the NES controller has a plastic cover because that's just the way that would have been done but the Famicom one has a brushed metal feature on the front and it is like real metal which I wasn't expecting. These guys have put a lot of detail into the aesthetic of these controllers. Even the color of the USB charge cable matches its controller which is nice because that means they put a lot of time and effort into the design of these things. Something you probably wouldn't expect from what you would assume are throwaway Bluetooth controllers.
So I sat down and tested out a bunch of video games with these controllers and I have to say they worked really great on mobile games. There's a lot of games that use these things natively and they work fantastic. You can also plug these up directly to your computer with USB and use them to play emulations and older video games like that. Now I did find that these controllers didn't work with every single game out there but if you're emulating something where you have the ability to put a direct input into them well you're going to be able to set these things up perfectly fine. They basically just get used as generic USB controllers but with mobile games you'll find that certain games don't actually make use of controllers in certain cases so you won't be able to just get them to work. 8Bitdo has some software you can download that can basically help you attach these things to certain games but they don't work for everything which is just basically the par for the course. Everyone knows to accept that kind of stuff when you're playing mobile games with these kind of controllers. You'll be able to hook up these controllers to multiple devices to play games with. They work on Mac, Linux, PC, Android and of course iOS but they also work as Wii remote controllers for your original Wii which is really cool. So you can play some Virtual Console games using these controllers like you would any other Wii controller.
Now the one thing I found that I wasn't really happy with was the fact that these controllers are pretty much a nightmare to hook up to whatever you're trying to hook up to. It'll take you a couple of minutes just to hook up them from one device to another so don't expect to be hooking these up to a million devices all at once because it can be quite taxing. The manual that comes with these controllers you have to keep close by because you will need it. Whenever you want to connect to a device there are these nondescript buttons on the bottom of the controller and they mean a bunch of different things. The manual will walk you through what they work for. Now everything we tested them out on works perfectly fine but it took some doing to kind of get them attached. So the difficulty on these things is really high up there but once you get them to work they are fantastic. The D-pads work, the analog thumbsticks are great, the buttons are very clicky and responsive and even the Start and Select buttons are made of rubber just like they would have been on the original controllers these are inspired by.
Now both the NES30 Pro and the FC30 Pro controllers come with really good boxes. Usually this isn't a highlight when you're getting these kind of controllers because you really don't care but these boxes were well packaged. Now to begin with they both come with USB to USB micro lines and these are the things you're going to use to hook up to the PC and recharge them. They also came with these kind of neat keychains which were cool and I like them because they're nice-looking but they really don't do anything for the controllers. The weird thing that they came with though was these little things that kind of look like a stand for your phone to prop it up while you game but we couldn’t figure out how to get them to work. So we’re not sure what they’re meant for. Other than that both the manuals are very easy to understand and they give you really great directions on how to hook up everything. Even though they might take a little bit longer than average. But both controllers are worth the price. They are fantastic little controllers that are Bluetooth, battery-powered and great. So if you're in the market and you want some really cool Bluetooth controllers that look like an NES controller and a Famicom controller with a bunch of additional buttons and joysticks these things are the way to go. Other than that though you may not want to be getting these things for playing regular Steam games on your computer they're probably not going to work for that. Good controllers overall though.
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