You have to love these small Chinese companies and the speed with which they come up with new controllers, emulator handhelds and other gadgets

These are a series of cheap (10-30 bucks depending on the seller and when you get them) Chinese Bluetooth controllers intended for use with phones and other mobile devices. The one I got was the D3 which I believe was the only model that was even available back in May, and it looked like this:

As you can see, it was very heavily inspired by the Switch, and that unfortunately extended to the dpad, or lack thereof. I’ve used it to play emulators on an Android phone and while it feels cheap, I’ve actually really liked it and my only real issue with it has been the horrible separated dpad. Trying to do any sort of diagonal movements on those tiny little round buttons has just made me map the dpad to the left joystick where applicable and made me avoid 2D platformers.

The last 3 models- D6, D7, and D8- have all had a proper dpad instead, with the D8 looking like the best controller design they’ve done yet. The reviews I found for it seemed to agree so I ended up ordering one from AliExpress’ Black Friday sale. Apparently it has Hall Effect joysticks and analog triggers, but all I need is for the dpad to be actually passable this time around. Here’s hoping I won’t get a lemon🤞

Looking on Reddit it seems like these are all designed by one guy who posts videos on Douyin and he’s already teased what the D9 is going to look like. While the D8 looks heavily inspired by Xbox controllers, the D9 looks to be even more heavily inspired by something else that recently came out:

Once again, you gotta love these Chinese companies, no shits given