We love any company that wants to revive a retro gaming product. But we love them even more when they do it well. Retro Fighters have revealed their all new Dreamcast controller that looks as if Apple themselves have designed it.
Officially named the “Strike DC” it’s a totally redesigned, more modern take on the Dreamcast controller. It only works with the Dreamcast, so don’t expect to plug it into your Nintendo Switch or PC. Hey, it may even work on the Dreamcast Mini if that becomes a thing?
The Dreamcast controller was never really ergonomic, it was like holding a dumbbell above your waist for hours on end, and hoping you can get to the next checkpoint before your biceps explode into a million pieces.
But even though it wasn’t the best to hold, it was one of the best to play on. It was a big step in terms of gaming controllers, Sega changed the game with their Visual Memory Units and large analogue sticks, but screwed up went it came to adding the cable to the bottom of the controller, why they did that, we will never know.
So now, 20 years later Retro Fighters have decided to reinvent the controller by making it far more ergonomic.
The Retro Fighters Dreamcast controller is compatible with 1st part VMU’s, vibration packs, 4X Memory Cards and even Microphones. Most 3rd party accessories will not work with the Strike DC, so don’t go hoping this can play some of our old weird accessories.
They’ve also created a whole new responsive d-pad, added both pressure sensitive triggers, a turbo function to help you to those hard levels and even revamped the analogue stick for high gameplay quality.
If you’ve had a Dreamcast you will know the old analogue stick use to get a bit… sticky, so having a sleek, responsive one is a must for any new Dreamcast controller.
Not only that, they’ve also added in a long 10′ cord so those of you that sit far from your TV will have no problem plugging it, and they’ve improved the VMU viewing window, because the old Dreamcast controller was a little hard to see in the dark due to the deep thick window creating shadows on the screen.
The Retro Fighters Dreamcast controller starts at $49.99 and will be in limited quantity for the first batch. We’ll admit, this is a hefty price for a controller, you can buy an actual Dreamcast for that but from what we can tell, it looks incredibly well designed.
We hope to get our hands on one when they officially launch in April, so be sure to swing back for our full review. Does the price tag live up to the expectation? Time will tell.
