(TL:DR at bottom) Hey guys! Arcanus here, I’ve been following this project for a considerable period of time, and I’m throwing this post around a bunch of subreddits now that the Smash Stick’s Kickstarter campaign has entered its final week. Now, I’m not here to simply throw up a quick post telling you to support a product that you may or may not have even heard of; this post is here to show you how amazing this product is, and why it deserves to reach its goal. As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Alt Lab Controllers (the makers of the product); this is not a promotional post coming from a representative of the company, but a post coming from a fan that truly believes in the quality of this product.

The Smash Stick is, as its namesake, a controller intended to be used with Smash Bros. Now why would we even want to use something like this, when we’ve had, and continue to use, the Gamecube controller (GCC) with such prevalence? Well for starters, the controller sucks. I mean, really, really sucks. The fact that “Melee” and “Arthritis” are commonly thrown together so much says a lot about how comfortable it is to use these controllers in Melee’s current competitive scene. On top of that, over the last few years a topic has come up in the smash community: controller parity. What this means is that there are subtle manufacturing differences between GCCs - these differences amalgamate into something we call the controller lottery - essentially any controller you pick up could have manufacturing differences highly in your favor, or heavily to your detriment. To go into full detail about what controller parity is and how it affects Smash is beyond the scope of this post, but one thing is clear; a GCC is simply an ineffective tool for use in highly competitive play due to ins unergonomic design and gameplay-affecting manufacturing inconsistencies. The problem is, until just recently, our options were incredibly limited, especially for Super Smash Bros. Melee players, whose only option is a GCC.

Over the past couple years a few scattered teams of talented individuals have come together to answer the question: how do we make a better controller for Smash? Well, the answer came pretty quickly; they took a page out of the Fighting Game Community (FGC) book - fight sticks. Now, previously there have been attempts to create a better controller for smash, but these were individual custom jobs, not something available to people at large. Enter the Smashbox and the B0XX, the first two “box-style” controllers for use with Smash. Now as much as I’d love to tell you about those two products, this post is about a different product, so I’ll simply say the two box controllers currently on the market use a different system than the Smash Stick - digital inputs. Their design opted for individual buttons for each of the directional inputs, rather than a single stick. This allows for much more precise control over one’s movement, but it does have some drawbacks. Now analog vs digital is yet another conversation we could have here, but again I’ll make a long story short: Smash was designed for analog input, not digital; a non-insignificant amount of freedom is given up in exchange for the higher precision of digital inputs. However, the Smash Stick was designed from the ground up to be an analog controller - your firefox angles, shield tilts, tilt angles, and wavedash lengths are perfectly preserved (if not made even more precise) by keeping an analog stick as the primary input style. So, a small history lesson to get you up to speed, we now find ourselves one week before the Smash Stick Kickstarter closes. So why should you even care? If you’ve got absolutely no interest in a fight stick in any capacity, then yeah, it’s probably not the best of ideas to back a $250 Kickstarter. But if this is something you might be interested in, then the more support Alt Lab gets the better. So what I’ll do here is, I’m gonna break down why I fell in love with the Stick, and maybe you might see something interesting enough to go find that Kickstarter.

Not a single controller currently exists that can do what the Smash Stick does.

This controller needs to be on the market, not only because it is a great addition to the current selection of box controllers, but, as I said previously, no other controller ever has done what this controller does. Now, hold up hold up hold up, lower those pitchforks. Of course, if you looked at the individual aspects of the controller, sure there are other products out there that offer something similar. The thing is though, nobody has ever put the work in to put everything that this controller is into one package.

It works on literally everything

Okay not literally everything. Right now the controller has confirmed compatibility with N64, Gamecube, Wii (U), Switch (all native), and PC (Xinput). Melee? Yep. Smash 64? Yessir. Tekken 7? Uh-huh. DBFZ? Absolutely. Rivals, Skullgirls, Killer Instinct, Slap City, Icons, ULTIMATE MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3, you fuckin name it kiddo, this baby can play ‘em all. PLUS, the stick’s hardware has been configured in such a way that post-launch firmware updates are more than capable of patching in additional functionality. If you’ve ever thought about buying a fight stick and just couldn’t justify the price for a good one compared to the games you play, well, why not buy a fight stick that plays literally all of them?

Ergonomics, backed by real research

The team at Alt Lab have both a significant background in fitness science and a motivation to make the most ergonomic controller possible. One of the co-founders of the company developed a series of debilitating hand injuries while playing on a gamecube controller - he was completely and totally barred from ever competing on that controller again, should his injuries worsen. Combined with the founder’s skills in fitness science, the two of them are dedicated to delivering the best product they can. So not only is this thing gonna play every Xinput fighting game you own, but it’s not gonna do jack to your hands.

A N A L O G

I really can’t stress enough how incredible it is to see a fight stick on the market with a high-end, custom made analog stick. I fell in love with the smash stick for this very reason - I can’t get my sick-ass mangles with digital inputs, nor can I get the full range of wavedash lengths, shield tilts, walk speeds, etc. Not only that, but this stick has actually been scaled down compared to a stick found on a traditional fight pad - this was done so that Melee (and by extension Smash) and its fast-paced, jerky stick movements would feel all the more comfortable to execute. And I know what you’re thinking, “Won’t dash dancing be bad on a big analog stick like that?” Not really, no. Of all the people that have demo’d the smash stick at the various tournaments they’ve attended, none of them have raised complaints about dash dancing or movement. Hell, if you check out the Kickstarter page you’ll see some testimonials from some more notable people who have tested the hardware.

Shield Drop Certified

For the melee players, the octagon gate that ships with the controller is calibrated to Axe shield drop angles. For the people that don’t play melee and have absolutely no idea what this means, it’s a tiny change that makes everyone’s lives easier.

I can sit here and go on and on and on about all the amazing things you can do with this controller and all the amazing things this controller does, but frankly you’re gonna get all of that from the Kickstarter page. This post isn’t about that; this post is from a fan, who’s been watching this team develop the coolest controller I’ve ever seen. The time, dedication, and enthusiasm from these guys is beyond worthy of the goal they have listed on the Kickstarter page. If you got a couple spare minutes in your day, go look ‘em up. And if they’re not your thing, maybe you got that one friend who might use something like this. I want these guys to succeed, and with the product they’re advertising, it’d be a crying shame if they had to delay this project further due to successive Kickstarter attempts.

If you reached the end of this post, awesome; the fact that you spent the time to read some fan’s homage to a really cool gadget is really amazing. If you came here for a tl;dr, well, the Smash Stick is the first smash controller and fight stick put into one, and that’s badass. It’s got tons of awesome features and is being developed by a team that sincerely cares about their product. The more support they get, all the better. I’m not gonna put a Kickstarter link in this post because I’m not here to sell a product - I’m throwing this post here because I love what these guys do, and I think more people should know about it. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your holidays!