Street Fighter Controller M. Bison Edition

Added September 30th, 2005 by LibThorne

I really, really want to judge this book by its cover, it’s just that shiny. The Street Fighter Anniversary M. Bison controller is the very definition of swank. Coming with not only an amazingly designed case with art by UDON (the makers of the current Street Fighter comic book) but also with a certificate of authenticity and a limited edition Street Fighter comic by UDON. This controller is styling before you even get it out of the box. Books can’t always be judged by their cover, and in this case we need to take a closer look at the Street Fighter Anniversary M. Bison controller.

The controller itself is gorgeous looking, with its 6 face buttons, gray d-pad, and maroon casing, situated around a moving image of M. Bison himself giving the player a Psycho Crusher. For the hardcore Street Fighter fan, this looks to be the absolute perfect controller.

The controller feels lighter, lighter than even the PS2 controller. This is quite a surprising feat considering the added gear for the Xbox Communicator. The size is roughly analogous to the old Sega Saturn controller (something that shouldn’t come as a surprise to many Saturn owners, once they see the controller) and feels very comfortable. The six face button arrangement is far and away superior to the Controller S and Controller L’s placement, at least for fighting games. The start and back buttons, however, are in a bad place, directly above the positioning for the X and Y buttons, and occasionally furious button pressing led to accidental restarts of many a match.


In the case of the M. Bison Street Fighter Anniversary Controller, the great exterior houses a flawed interior. First off, let’s get some misconceptions cleared away. The Street Fighter Anniversary pad is optimized solely for fighting games, specifically 2D fighting games such as Guilty Gear, King of Fighters, and of course Street Fighter. Don’t expect to be annihilating the Covenant with this controller. The buttons proved responsive enough and were ideally mapped to the default settings, an area where this pad noticeably improves on its PS2 counterpart. The absolute key thing in a controller suited for fighting games is the d-pad, and it is most unfortunate that this is the weakest element of the Street Fighter Anniversary Controller for Xbox. The controller I reviewed felt very off on the left side of the pad.

For example, performance on the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike was noticeably terrible. Simple quarter circle forward motions were simply unperformable, forcing the player to use the half circle forward motion to throw a simple fireball. Jumping forward and jumping backwards was also noticeably difficult in every game tested, requiring the relevant direction, either forwards or backwards, to be input before hitting the up button. This is really an unforgivable oversight, considering that diagonal jumping is a fundamental element of 2D fighting gameplay. Barring two quarter circle forward motions, however, all other key motions were performable, though not without some difficulty, and the controller handled moderately well in Guilty Gear XX#Reload, SvC: Chaos: SNK Vs. Capcom, and Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO. Performance took a noticeable hit in the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection versions of Hyper Street Fighter II and Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. Charge characters, like the prominently featured M. Bison, do not suffer as badly as the “Shoto” characters (for the uninitiated, Ryu, Ken, and Akuma are called shoto characters after the martial art they practice), due to their lack of multiple directional inputs for their super and special moves.


In fact, M. Bison controls fairly well on the pad bearing his image, in both Hyper Street Fighter II and Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO. However, in quarter circle reliant games such as Street Fighter 3 and Guilty Gear, not to mention the obscene motions required for a game like SvC: Chaos: SNK Vs. Capcom, the M. Bison controller is terrible. Combos are difficult to perform normally, but with this controller they’re nearly impossible. Notably in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, simple combos like Chun Li’s crouching medium kick into her Houyoku Sen super art is impossible, as is Makoto’s Abare Tosanami juggle.

So, what are us gamers left with? Well, a really, really, really cool piece of plastic that looks fine on a Street Fighter memorabilia shelf, but is not quite so suited for actual play. I wish so very hard that this wasn’t so, but it is. If you’re a Street Fighter fan and a fighting game aficionado, this is a quality collectable to purchase. If you fulfill the above criteria and actually want a playable controller, avoid the Street Fighter Anniversary M. Bison controller. This controller stands in stark contrast to the PlayStation 2 version of the same controller, which is excellent in most every way. The Xbox Controller S and Controller L is held in a state of disregard by most fighting game fans due to the horrible button and trigger placement, as well as a far less than ideal d-pad, so many were looking forward to the Xbox Street Fighter Anniversary Controller. That the controller is not even as usable as the normal controller S is a massive disappointment not only to this reviewer, but to many fighting game fans.

Note: This review was based on the Japanese controller, not the recently released American version of the Street Fighter Anniversary Controller, which may have addressed these problems with the directional pad.


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