ThinkGeek is selling a third-party replica SNES controller for use on Wii, and we checked it out.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/30288
This month, ThinkGeek.com began selling a piece of hardware that looked awfully familiar. In fact, it looked identical to a controller I am very familiar with: the Super NES controller. Moreover, it looked very similar to a Club Nintendo reward that never made it's way to the United States. The product in question is a replica Super Famicom controller that can be used as a Classic Controller on your Wii. I was excited about this, so I sent in a request for a review copy and was pleased to get my hands on the controller a few days later.
The controller definitely has the look of the original. With the exception of the missing Nintendo logo, you'd be hard-pressed to notice any difference between the replica and the real thing. Unfortunately, when you pick up the controller, the differences begin to show.
The controller unfortunately does not have the exact feel of a genuine Nintendo product. The D-pad feels stiff, and the buttons just a bit loose. Everything feels just a little bit off. Even worse, when I first booted up a Super NES game on my Wii with the controller, I found that in order to coax Link to the right I had to hold down on the D-Pad far more than comfortable. Out of the box, the thing wasn't particularly usable. As someone who was very excited about this controller, I was quite disappointed.
Never one to be deterred, I did a quick Google search on people who had controllers that behaved this way. I found one suggestion saying if you opened the controller up and adjusted the placement of the rubber pieces, you might have some luck. I grabbed my handy screwdriver and pulled the controller apart. Once inside, I pulled the rubber away from the contacts, and placed it back in again the way I had found it. I didn't expect there to be much of a change when I put the controller back together and started my game back up, but much to my surprise, whatever minor adjustments I had made inside the hardware had done the trick; Link was now able to move freely with minimal effort. It wasn't quite the buttery-smooth feel of a genuine Super NES controller, but it was definitely acceptable.
With the controller behaving properly, I don't have much bad to say about it other than the fact that it feels a bit cheaper than the genuine product. If you're handy with a screwdriver, and have a spare Super NES controller handy, you could even go through the trouble to replace all of the hardware and get yourself something that feels a bit more genuine. In fact, that's exactly what I plan to do. It may not be what the maker intended, but it's an option, and one that might end up leaving the user more satisfied than they would have otherwise been.
To be sure the controller behaved as expected with other branches of the Virtual Console platform, I fired up NES, Genesis, WiiWare and TurboGrafx-16 games. All of those platforms seem to work just fine with the SF Classic Controller. The only exception was WiiWare games, of course, that require analog stick control. I had no problems controlling Castlevania The Adventure: Rebirth, but Cave Story didn't work at all. It's also worth noting that if you have homebrew applications that use the Classic Controller, they might not work with this variation. I tried a few homebrew applications and most of them either didn't work properly, or crashed outright.
Out of the box, I can't say I was happy with the SF Classic Controller for Wii. With a little effort, however, I got the controller behaving as expected. Having the Super NES controller design in your hands while you're playing Super Metroid or A Link to the Past is certainly a nice bonus, and this product is probably the easiest way to go about achieving that.
Topic: SF Classic Controller Review (Read 2471 times)
