I love fighting games. It’s a genre that has a beautifully low bar for entry – but a delightful path to mastery that is endlessly satisfying. I have gleefully sacrificed hours of my life to games like PowerStone, Soulcalibur and the Mortal Kombat series.
One facet of the fighting game lifestyle is your choice of input – and I have never been confident enough to pull the trigger on a dedicated device. Lack of confidence, odd limitations on certain hardware – and some eye watering prices have left me high and dry. It also doesn’t help that being a Tasmanian gamer I struggle to find people locally who could advise me; or better yet let me assault their peripheral of choice and let my fingers decide how they find it.
I always felt drawn to fightpads – classic controllers that don’t make use of a stick – and managed to get pretty far with using both my PS4 Dualshock and PS5 Dualsense controller d-pads. But an arcade stick, which it’s larger size always seemed more appealing – and that brings us to the Razer Kitsune:
A new fighting game meta approaches. Learn the way of the Razer Kitsune—an all-button optical arcade controller that surpasses traditional fight sticks. Be among the first to unlock flawless technique for competitive play. Sign up now to be notified: https://t.co/kC1qps5sfn pic.twitter.com/LjzhRYD6wh
— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) June 1, 2023
It may not be the first of its kind, but it is absolutely the first one that has made its way to my eyeballs.
This crazy unit seems to have been conjured from my thoughts. It’s an arcade stick, with delightful arcade-styled buttons – but no stick. That means no mis-inputs from troublesome, untrustworthy fingers.
I have been staring at it for a few days now, almost questioning if it was real. This could well be the device that solves the final part of my slow and steady relationship with fighting games – the input option that makes me feel like one of the elite fighting legends. In my own home at least.
It also has a crazy thin profile – something that turned me off a number of Hori fightsticks that hovered warily over my Amazon cart. This thing can be stored efficiently when not in use, instead of needing some dedicated shelf or carjack to hold it up:
My only real criticism to be laid against it are the fact that it appears to have a permanent cord – not that I wished for it to be wireless (latency, yo) but the fact that you can’t unplug it means that transporting it will be a minor ordeal. Wrapping cords up is just yucky in the year of our lord 2023 – and it also means that any damage to befall your cord is not easily fixed with a replacement. A gripe to be sure, but something that was immediately noticeable.
Edit: The pictures appear to be misleading! A Razer source openly states that it has a removable USB-C cable! You can even see the cable detached in this gorgeous video showcasing the Street Fighter 6 Chun-Li design:
Can we talk about how beautiful this @Razer Kitsune stick is?! #SF6 pic.twitter.com/fEYyQSrpHv
— Sherry Nhan (@sherryjenix) June 1, 2023
With Mortal Kombat 1 lurking in the latter half of the year, I will be tracking the development of this device closely. I am excited to think that I might be ready to take things to the next level with my fighting game relationships – I have been flirting with them for years, and I might finally be ready for something more serious.
What do you think of the Razer Kitsune? Are you a fighting pad maestro? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
