I play a lot of old games, and I try to stick to their original consoles as much as possible. But sometimes it can be exceedingly hard to find a particular game for a reasonable price, or the game has never received an official translation, and thus would require learning a new language just to play. This is when many people turn to emulation, but one of the drawbacks to emulating a game on a computer or a mobile device is that you miss out on the feel and preciseness the original console's controller provides.

This is what I had hoped that Tomee's USB retro SNES controller would alleviate. At first glance, the controller seems to be an almost exact recreation of the original SNES controller. It's only when I held it in my hands that I felt how light and cheap the controller actually felt. It wouldn't have been a big deal had the controller worked perfectly like a SNES. Sadly, there is a major flaw with the controller that keeps it from recreating the Super Nintendo Experience. The D-pad doesn't perfectly detect which way you are holding the buttons. Holding left for example might have your character moving up or diagonally , while holding down might result in your character shuffling left and right. The reason for this is that the D-pad has four spokes that are to long, and in my case uneven. You can alleviate this problem by removing the D-pad, taking a nail file, and scraping the spokes down, but it takes a lot of trial and error before you get the D-pad in an acceptable condition, and its usually still far from perfect.

I bought mine for around $15 at hastings, and would have returned it rather than attempted to fix it had it cost me any more than that. There seems to be better alternatives to this controller on amazon, such as the buffalo classic gamepad, or Gtron SNES USB adaptor. Overall, give this product a miss if you come across it at your local game shop.

4/10