Classic arcade games are available on every platform, and fighting games have become one of the biggest e-sports. Xgaming's X-Arcade Dual Joystick brought two sets of excellent arcade controls to the home in a massive 12-pound slab, and was one of the best controllers you could get to play older games. Now Xgaming has a one-player model that's half the size, less expensive, and can now stand among the competitive sticks used by fighting game enthusiasts. The X-Arcade Solo Joystick ($99.99 direct) can work with nearly any game system (with another $30-60 for adapters), is nearly indestructible, and is simply one of the best controllers I've tested; it wins our Editors' Choice award as a result.

Design

The X-Arcade Solo Joystick is a big controller, measuring 16.8 inches wide, 10 inches deep, and a towering 4.1 inches tall from base to top of the chassis. The top surface gently inclines toward the player, and feels a little better on the wrists than completely flat, straight competitive joysticks. It weighs a hefty 5.7 pounds and feels like a chunk of an arcade machine lifted cleanly out of a cabinet. Xgaming describes its X-Arcade joysticks as "indestructible," and while that's a claim I always strive to disprove before my colleagues reiterate the PCMag Labs' "no burning lasers, acid, or bees" policy to me, the X-Arcade Solo certainly lives up to its just-shy-of-literal description. It feels solid in a bludgeon-worthy way, and you could easily use the joystick as a short step-ladder before getting back to playing games on it.

Xgaming doesn't specific the actual brand of components used, only that it uses "authentic arcade joysticks and buttons." They certainly feel like they're from an arcade cabinet, with the concave buttons and baseball bat-style joystick both sturdy and responsive. Besides the buttons on the top, flipper buttons on the left and right sides offer pinball controls if you like pinball video games. Xgaming says the components have been tested for 10,000,000 uses, and the company provides a lifetime warranty with each X-Arcade stick. This is helpful, since the X-Arcade Solo is compatible with several generations of game systems, so you'll likely be keeping it for a very long time. 

The one-player design pushes the X-Arcade series from a line of products for arcade fans and retro games into a line hardcore fighting game enthusiasts might use. The X-Arcade Dual and Tankstick are too large, bulky, and two-player to use competitively, but the X-Arcade Solo is small and light enough to take anywhere you might see a MadCatz Fightstick or Hori arcade stick.

Compatibility

One of the X-Arcade Solo Joystick's greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness: It can work with nearly any game system. You can use adapters to connect the stick to an Microsoft Xbox 360See it at Amazon UK, original Xbox, Sony PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, original PlayStation, Nintendo Wii U, Wii, GameCube, Sega Dreamcast, or a PC. All of this compatibility means you need to get at least one adapter for $29.99 in addition to the X-Arcade Solo Joystick itself if you don't want to just hook it up to a PC. 

Out of the box, it can connect to a PC through either USB or PS/2 ports—the USB port through the serial port on the back and the serial-to-USB cable included with the joystick, and the PS/2 port through the PS/2 cable on the back. But if you want to hook it up to a PlayStation 3 you need to plug the joystick into an adapter and then run the adapter's USB port to the game system's port. Connecting it to an Xbox 360 is even more complicated, with a total of three adapters daisy-chained together to function. The Xbox 360 adapter bundle is $60, twice as much as the $30 PlayStation 3 and original Xbox combination adapter, or the $30 five-in-one adapter for Wii/Wii U, PlayStation/PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Dreamcast. Xgaming hopes to release Xbox One and PlayStation 4 adapters in the future, but availability has not yet been announced.

Performance

For classic arcade games, the X-Arcade Joystick Solo feels great. It's just large enough to sit comfortably on a table or your lap, and the angled surface feels just like an arcade cabinet. I played some classic Sega Genesis games on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PlayStation 3, and everything from Streets of Rage 2 to Shinobi 3 felt responsive and comfortable. Since it works with PCs out of the box and can be used with nearly any game system from the last three console generations, you can play a lot of old-school arcade titles with this stick. Add a two-liter bottle of Shasta and an all-Rush mix tape, and you're ready to rock.

For competitive fighting games, I defer to the expertise of my colleague Jeffrey Wilson. He tried the X-Arcade Joystick Solo with King of Fighters '13 and Mortal Kombat (9) on the PC, and he said the joystick felt responsive and very comfortable. Enthusiast joysticks used in the competitive fighting game community have slightly different layouts, customizable internals, and ball-style instead of baseball-style sticks, but on pure build quality and responsiveness the X-Arcade Joystick Solo is comparable.

I called the X-Arcade Dual Joystick one of the best game controllers I've used, and one that I would be proud to have as part of my gaming setup, but its $130 price tag and huge footprint hold it back for gamers who mostly play online and not physically next to people. Xgaming solved these issues with the X-Arcade Solo Joystick, which stands as not only one of the best retro sticks you can get, but a solid deal to boot. Its one-player design is is portable enough to use competitively, and everything from its case to its buttons feel like they were taken fresh off of an arcade cabinet. Its $100 price tag only seems high until you consider that other arcade joysticks generally start at that price and get higher from there. The stick's lifetime warranty and plethora of available adapters (including, hopefully, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 adapters soon) ensure that it will likely outlast your current game system and PC. If you miss the arcade, you owe it to yourself to check out the X-Arcade Solo Joystick.