Retro-Bit 8 Button Arcade Pad with USB

I recently spotted a good deal for a Retro-Bit's 8-button USB pad that takes inspiration from the original Mega Drive / Genesis controller. It's apparently officially licensed by SEGA and I've read some favorable reviews online so for 16€ including shipping this seemed like a good deal.

Front of the box

Back of the box

The box pretty much says it all. It's compatible with pretty much everything, has 8 buttons, long USB cable and is officially licensed by SEGA. The latter claim unfortunately doesn't tell much since even the horrible AtGames stuff five or so years back was also officially licensed. To be fair it seems that AtGames are now producing some interesting quality stuff but that is another story.
The important page of the instructions leaflet

Inside of the box is the controller itself in a plastic tray and an instruction leaflet. The leaflet has some important instuctions on how the switch between D-Input and X-Input modes and the button functionalities for different modes.

Front of the controller

Back of the controller

Shoulder buttons

I got the clear blue version because it was the only one on sale. I would have preferred the black one but I have to say that the clear blue looks really good. The button layout is similar to original 6-button Mega Drive / Genesis controller with the addition of mode and shoulder buttons. The D-pad and front buttons are all with silicone membranes and the shoulder buttons have clicky microswitches. Out of the box the controller feels excellent. Build quality is top notch. I was not expecting this from a relatively cheap pad. It has been so long since I've held an original 6-button controller that it is difficult to say how close this feels to the original. Nonetheless this feels like a premium new controller. Far cry from the cheapest stuff you can get from AliExpress.
Size comparison to original 3-button controller

I've been playing quite a lot with the original 3-button controller so I was bit shocked how small the Retro-Bit pad based on the 6-button design felt. I do prefer the "handles" and a bit larger size of the 3-button controller. However the size of the Retro-Bit controller eventually was not an issue at least for me. My hands didn't get cramped and I could easily reach all the buttons.
I have to say that for now the Retro-Bit 8 Button Arcade Pad with USB is my go to controller when playing emulated retro games. The 8-buttons cover pretty much all the consoles up to and including 16-bit machines. The problem with good SNES controllers is that there is always compromise with the Mega Drive / Genesis button layout. With this controller you have to compromise a bit by having smaller X and Y buttons for SNES games but I didn't find that problematic. An of course the A/B and X/Y are reversed when compared to SNES but you can change the layout in emulators.
The buttons and D-pad are really responsive. I'd go as far as saying that the D-pad is the best I've ever used. The main directions and diagonals are precise and it is easy to roll to pull off special moves in fighting games. Very good stuff from Retro-Bit. I also have the original non-HDMI Super Retro Trio from Retro-Bit and even though the console itself is not great, the included SNES style controllers are excellent. So seems they have a habit of making good controllers.

And little bonus for anybody using MiST FPGA or clones. I found that at least with SiDi the USB PID & VID do not match the ones Windows is giving. I think the pad defaults to Mac mode when connected to Linux. So here are the mist.ini joystick mappings for general use:
joystick_remap=0f0d,00c1,1,2,4,8,200,20,10,100,400,800,1000,2000,40,80
This maps all the buttons to what is shown on the button (i.e. A = A, B = B and so on). Mode is Select. Z is L2 and C is R2. And this is what I use for fpgagen core:
joystick_remap=0f0d,00c1,1,2,4,8,200,20,10,100,400,800,0,40,40,80
So same as above but C is now Select since fpgagen maps MiST Select to C button. Also Z is disabled.




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