Upcoming Launch of Ultra Street Fighter II Highlights a Need for a Six-Button Controller

The Street Fighter II series has been legendary for over 25 years now, and it’s definitely best enjoyed with six face buttons at your disposal. The game’s three punch and three kick buttons worked perfectly on the Sega Genesis six button controller, and fared equally as well on either of the two Sega Saturn pads – with the second version later being viewed as one of the best controllers ever made. Third party controllers since then have thrown a bone to fighting fans with Saturn-style controllers on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the latter working on the PS4 version of Street Fighter V just fine – but nothing is in the works for Ultra Street Fighter II.

As it stands, the only control options available for it will be the Joycons on either the Switch itself or on the grip, the Pro Controller, or the upcoming Retro Fighters Turbo Controller. This company has made several other accessories, with mixed reviews – making a purchase of that controller a bit questionable on day one. Fortunately, as a blind buy, it is only $30 – so if it winds up being sub-par, you’re not out a ton of money. In looking at the close-up shots of the pad, it definitely has some promise.

It retains the off-set Xbox 360/Xbox One-style stick placement of the Pro controller. It appears to have rubberized grips on the sticks and on the handles – so that should make long gameplay sessions more comfortable. The face buttons look large, and the shoulders and triggers look like they should be comfortable. The bumpers are larger than usual, which could be good since super-small bumpers can be harder to hit from a variety of angles. That kind of issue hurt the first batch of Xbox One pads, which required your fingers to be in a perfect spot at all time to even hit them – and the travel level on them was about on-par with the shoulder buttons on the first batch of Sega Saturn controllers. It wasn’t ideal, so having more angles to hit them should work well.

The d-pad looks fairly large, and hopefully it doesn’t sink in like the Pro controller’s does. While this pad won’t have things like HD rumble, for a fighting game, that really won’t matter much and it will be nice to have a lower-cost option for games that support the Pro controller. Hopefully the pad is well-crafted and comfortable. If it is, then it should be easy to play Ultra SF II with it. Sure, a six-button option would be better overall, but 25 years of SNES and PlayStation controller usage means that many should be at least used to it – even if it’s not a perfect option. The Retro Fighters Turbo controller launches the same day as Ultra Street Fighter II on May 26.