The 8BitDo Lite is secretly the best controller for platformers and puzzlers

I've learned a lot of tricks since the first time I took my Nintendo Switch Pro Controller apart and taped it up to improve its shitty d-pad.

Since then, I've cracked open the shells of probably another dozen controllers to tape off contact pads or try to raise pivot points. I've invested many hours in one particular bad pad attached to a popular, if controversially expensive, portable system.

Before that, though, decades ago, I spent many, many hours with two systems in particular—the Game Boy Advance SP and the Nintendo DS' original model. And they had something really special: d-pads based on low-profile surface mount tactile switches.

Obviously, these things have the immediate benefit of making the portable console thinner. But the other thing they do is, well—be tactile! It's right in the name. They resist just a little bit, then they snap, and boom: they've made contact.

Because I can feel them, and because they're very strongly On or Off in a way that rubber-membrane d-pads aren't, it's super easy to not mistakenly trigger a direction I don't mean to. I can hold "down" all day long, leaning on either side or swaying back and forth, and I will never trigger left or right until I actually press left or right.

That may sound kind of bad for games that require diagonal motion, but it's not! With a good pad shape, diagonals are really easy; just roll your thumb until the adjacent direction clicks on too. Then, to move to that next cardinal, keep rolling till the first direction clicks off.

Back in that era, when I was playing Animal Crossing: Wild World, it was actually worse when the DS Lite switched away from a tactile d-pad to a more traditional rubber membrane. Admittedly, that pad was bad in general. But, going from the DS to the lite, the diagonals became shitty as hell, making it impossible to walk reliably in any direction but a cardinal one. I ended up sending away DS Lite systems for repair for just that (plus a few for the notorious broken hinges, natch… that system was really badly made) while my original DS kept on truckin'.

But that's background. This is actually about something I have in my hot little hands in the Year of Our Lorde 2025.

I have to confess. The first time I saw the 8BitDo Lite, I said "what the heck is that?"

It made no sense. Nintendo came out with the Switch Lite, and 8BitDo's answer was to… make a controller with no joysticks? With d-pads instead? What?

Fast forward half a decade to today, when I've been hammering away at the Special World levels from Super Mario Bros. Wonder using a series of controllers sporting d-pads of… shall we say… varying quality. I've been a bit frustrated.

I was eyeing the Ultimate (which I've read has worse d-pads than the Pro 2, which I already own… quality is going downhill over at 8BitDo, I guess?) and noticed the Lite. Couldn't hurt to look into it, I thought—and my jaw dropped when I saw the insides posted on Reddit.

I can't say these are the same switches that the Game Boy Advance SP (and the Nintendo DS, and the 3DS family of systems) has. But they look the same.

I got one. I tried it. And they feel the same, sound the same…

And Mario never just randomly starts running to the left while I'm trying to hold down to duck under the fire of a Pirahna Plant…

And random Tetris pieces don't just start randomly hard-dropping while I'm moving them left and right…

And Mario (I play a lot of Mario, okay?) never just randomly butt-stomps into a river of poison while I'm trying to wall-jump my way up a tunnel…

When things go wrong, it's because I pressed the wrong button. It's not because the controller is bad.

I get that the travel on these is low, and it might be nice for it to be higher. But the precision, my friend, is nigh unassailable. And they've got a mode that lets me swap around the d-pad and buttons on the left, too, so they work with everything.

Sadly, the new 8BitDo Lite 2s have, in addition to going back to sticks, apparently reverted to inferior d-pad tech. Which makes Baby Mario cry. (Have you played Yoshi's Island? You don't wanna hear that.)

These Lites that I did get my hands on are new, but were fulfilled by Amazon and from a third-party seller. They seem legit and I hope they are… cross fingers.

I hope they last, because they're special as hell.