The Sega Dreamcast was Sega’s last home console before transitioning over to a software-only business. Despite only selling through ~9 million units and being abandoned midway through its life cycle, the Dreamcast boasts an impressive library of classics. To this day numerous homebrew releases still grace the system giving long-time fans just one more reason to keep playing! Growing up with pure Nintendo systems (aside from my Sega Game Gear) until getting an original Xbox in 2002, I missed out on the Dreamcast’s heyday. It was 2006 when I finally picked up Sega’s final system complete with 2 controllers and 4 games from Amazon for a meager $25. Even though it was the start of the HD era, the Dreamcast output beautiful images on my VGA equipped HDTV and I loved it! To this day the Dreamcast remains one of my personal favorite systems and I love to see all the support it still gets. And, that is what brings us here today, the release of the Retro Fighters Striker DC Gamepad!

With the Striker DC, Retro Fighters is bringing modern controller design to the Sega Dreamcast. Having previously launched modern alternatives for the NES, N64, and Sega Genesis/Saturn, Dreamcast is finally getting its turn! Unlike the recently released Brawler GEN’s, the Striker DC debuted to the public on Kickstarter back in February 2019 with a funding goal of $13,000. The campaign utterly smashed through that goal ending with $130,753 in funding! All that was left to do was wait till September to finally experience Dreamcast in a whole new way. Unfortunately, delays hit the production of the Striker DC to ensure proper quality on the build, pushing the release back until January 2020. Another short delay would follow to allow for the celebration of Chinese New Year in January 2020. Then production suffered another delay due to the outbreak of COVID-19. It is now the end of May and the Striker DC is finally beginning to ship to backers and trust me, it was worth the wait!

What’s In The Box

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I checked the mailbox and found the package containing the Striker DC! I hadn’t kept up on the production updates and with COVID-19 still being a huge cause for delays I didn’t really expect Retro Fighters to stick to any hard timelines. Upon opening the package I was blown away by what I saw, yes I am about to talk about the box for a bit so if that isn’t your thing skip on ahead because I love packaging!

The Striker DC comes in a box that is a vast departure from what Retro Fighters has done in the past. While I liked the look of the Brawler 64 and Brawler GEN boxes, they just pale in comparison to the Striker DC’s packaging. The aesthetic in use here is just super clean and less noisy not to mention super thick and sturdy. Three main colors are at work with the solid white background being accented by a North American/Japanese Dreamcast inspired orange colored stripe. Likewise the text also employs this orange color as well as a European Dreamcast inspired blue. This homage to the regional differences is such a great touch I love it! A depiction of the Striker DC is also present along the front showing off the new modern design. The top and bottom once again show off the Striker DC though more stylized with only half of the controller being shown for each. Having the opposite sides being displayed for each works really well. I think one of the coolest designs of this box is that you can display it really well, if you are into that sort of thing. The Striker DC text can even be oriented with an upward or downward preference.

The back of the box retains the same clean presentation and is completely void of any additional imagery. A short description of the controller is present with a number of bullet points outlining key features. My box didn’t have any seals on it so it was quick to pop the 2 halves apart to expose the goods within! Did I mention this thing is amazingly sturdy?! The first thing you will be greeted with is the Striker DC quickstart guide. The setup section of the guide was of particular interest to me as it outlines that the Striker DC is compatible with all first-party accessories and most third-party ones. This means the Striker DC should work with the game Seaman perfectly fine with the Dreamcast Mic. (I sadly don’t own this game and have no way to test it.) There is also a note that the controllers built-in turbo functionality won’t work with the shoulder buttons. Good to know! Next up is a Frequently Asked Questions sheet that further outlines some of the controllers features and design choices. Next there is a Retro Fighters keychain and sticker sheet which was part of the Kickstarter stretch goals. And finally we have the Striker DC itself!

Aesthetics And Build Quality

I want to say this now before we move forward, I don’t dislike the original Dreamcast controller. The thumbstick and D-pad aren’t my favorites but I have played with far worse. That being said, I am blown away by just how comfortable the Striker DC is compared to the original! The handles have a great ergonomic design and they are long enough to let all of my fingers get a grip on them. The design naturally angles my thumbs and index fingers into position over the thumbstick, face, and shoulder buttons. With a slight readjustment of my hand I can also shift to comfortable D-pad usage.

The Striker DC shell employs a two-tone white and grey color scheme just like the Dreamcast console and it looks as nice as ever. The accenting colors of the face buttons is pleasing and helps the Striker DC overcome the boring look found on the Brawler GEN. The engraved Retro Fighters logo also looks good in use over the VMU port which has been redesigned to give better viewing angles for the tiny monochrome screen. As with standard Dreamcast controllers, the Striker DC has 2 expansion ports to accommodate accessories. For anyone who has played Dreamcast, you know and have feelings about how the controller's cord comes out from the bottom of the shell. On the Striker DC, The cord is still located at the bottom of the expansion port but is output upward which is a perfect solution in my mind. This solution lets you rest the controller against things without having to worry about bending the cord, which is 10 feet long now by the way, and includes an authentic Dreamcast style connector!

All of the buttons you would expect to find on a Dreamcast controller are present with a few key additions. First and most importantly are the additions of a second set of digital shoulder buttons that mirror the L and R buttons minus the analog range. The addition of digital L and R buttons makes quick repeat presses easier and the actuation quicker compared to the regular analog triggers. Ideal usage is for fighting games but shooters also benefit. The second addition comes from the Turbo and Clear buttons which allow you to assign/remove turbo functionality for any of the face buttons. Again, the turbo mode won’t work for L or R.

Buttons themselves have an interesting feel to use and I was feeling pretty hit and miss with a few of them at first. Let’s begin with what I found to be the best here and that is the D-pad. Each of the four directions feels solid to press. Even pressing down in the center still allows you to roll the D-pad which isn’t always the case in third-party offerings. Next the digital shoulder buttons are able to be triggered from practically any position so there is no need to worry if your finger placement will result in a missed input! The traditional triggers, while smaller than I expected, have a great range of motion with a satisfying level of resistance. I like how it feels to fully press them down as they don’t come to a hard stop but have a bit of absorption which makes using them more comfortable to me. 

Start, Turbo, and Clear all respond well to presses and have a satisfying click when used. Speaking of clicky, the face buttons also emit loud clicks when pressed down. They feel really good to use and the actuation range feels perfect but man they are loud! I am also digging them being grouped closer together than on a standard Dreamcast controller. Last up is the analog stick and I had concerns at first. The stick includes a rubberized grip which the Dreamcast sorely needed and it is a touch smaller. The stick resistance is a bit lower than I personally prefer but that is just a matter of preference more than anything. The physical movement range being different from an original controller though had me worried about it affecting performance in-game; it didn’t, so no worries!

Gameplay

As I began to dive into games it was actually the thumbstick’s performance I noticed first before anything else. This thing handles games smoothly! Despite the stick being looser than I prefer, I was able to accurately play every game I tested. Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament in particular were especially great for testing this. Ok, more so Quake than Unreal, because the auto aim in that game is unreal… Bad puns aside, having not played the Dreamcast version of Quake III Arena with a controller in so long I didn’t expect things to go so smoothly. Aiming felt precise and the stick responsive. The face buttons being closer together also made movement much easier compared to the original Dreamcast controller. I also found myself using the digital shoulder buttons quite often for firing. After spending the fastest hour in history playing Quake III I felt I had a good baseline for how the Striker DC would handle the rest of the games in my library.

Doing a replay of Army Men’s Sarge’s Heroes with the Striker DC was particularly enjoyable. I set up custom button mappings with R being set to fire and L to activate strafe, and other actions being assigned to face buttons and the D-pad. With this setup I use the analog trigger to activate strafing which ends up activating around mid press so it smoothly triggers the functionality. For firing I have loved using the digital shoulder button to quickly pull off shots. Other functions like jumping, diving, switching weapons, and zooming in all worked as expected without any issue. Movement likewise felt responsive and accurate and I felt like some of the weirder jumping sections of the game were easier than normal. I seriously love this game and am excited whenever I get a chance to revisit it! 

Star Wars Episode 1 Racer is another game I like to use to test thumbsticks as sensitivity can really affect turns. Working my way through the intermediate courses was a breeze and the triggers performed great for powerslides! Other racing games handled equally well and are a great showcase for the pressure sensitivity of the triggers. Arcade racers in particular were a blast to test with the Striker DC. Speaking of arcade games, you can’t test a controller for Dreamcast without loading up some Crazy Taxi! Triggers again worked well for gas and brake and the face buttons responsive enough to do power boosts. As a side note, I didn’t realize I owned so many Dreamcast racing games.

While the Striker DC has handled everything I have thrown up to it at this point exceptionally well, it was time to test out the Dreamcast’s abundant library of fighting games and I have a few. I decided to start off with Power Stone as it isn’t your traditional 3D fighter. Movement around the arena felt great with the analog stick and the face buttons worked well to let me attack. I was also very pleased by the performance in Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive 2. I play these games using the D-pad and it blows the original out of the water! Everything was very quick and responsive and honestly the only thing that let me down was my own rusty skill level. Moving over to the 2D fighters, The D-pad once again turned in a solid performance. In Street Fighter I was easily able to pull off all of Ryu’s moves without issue and again, so much more comfortably than with an original controller. In Marvel Vs Capcom 2 I was once again able to pull off Ryu’s combos with ease, and calling in support attacks and switching characters was a breeze!

As a final test for the Striker DC’s D-pad I had to load up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. As good as it felt to play my fighting games, I am hardly an FGC champ and with my skill level I am sure I didn’t do enough due-diligence testing the diagonal inputs. This is something I do rely heavily on in Tony Hawk though and I have tested controllers on other platforms recently that have let me down in this regard. But again, the Striker turned in a very solid performance and being able to execute my diagonal tricks was very natural. Pulling off specials was equally easy and felt better than I am used to on Dreamcast. In the end I tested the Striker DC against my entire Dreamcast library of 40 games and the story was the same, the experience bested that of the original Dreamcast controller.

What It Could Have Done Better

Honestly the Striker DC handled so well that I couldn’t find anything to criticize with it other than resorting to extreme nitpicking. The triggers are a touch smaller than I would like, the thumbstick is slightly looser than I prefer, the buttons are loud to press, the VMU sticking out from the top is odd. Seriously that’s all I got here… None of this affects gameplay in a negative way, but rather this has been some of the best gaming with the Dreamcast I have ever had in the 14 years I have owned one! Oh, and by the way, being able to see the VMU easier is a better feature than I gave it credit for.

Verdict

The road to release for the Striker DC has been a long one but the end result has been more than worth it! Retro Fighters has continued to build upon their previous works to the point that I now consider the Striker DC to be the best original designed third-party retro controller made to date. The upgrades in both design and functionality over the original are clear from the moment you first hold it and load up a game. For everyone looking to get the best experience out of their Dreamcast this is the new standard! Time for me to go order 3 more.