You can play a lot of games on your phone, old and new. I’ve gone through Skies of Arcadia on international flights thanks to near-perfect emulation of the GameCube era. And the best way to do it, if you ask me, is with a clip-on controller to spare you from the touchscreen blues. Thankfully, The Dude abides. This particular Dude is 8BitDo.
The Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller is pretty much exactly what it looks like: an Xbox-style controller that fits a phone in the middle of its sliding cradle. Unlike a lot of these gadgets, it’s full-sized — if I hold the empty controller in my hand and close my eyes, I’d have a hard time telling it apart from a basic controller.
On top of the sliding cradle and Bluetooth connection, this design does a little more than the basic Xbox pad. You get Hall effect sensors on both the analog sticks and the primary triggers, and an extra set of rear buttons that can be bound to any standard control (I like to use them for L3 and R3). The only thing missing is the vibration/rumble, and considering this thing is meant for travel and long battery life, that’s understandable.
The controller is basically perfect for my Galaxy Fold, which is about as wide as a regular phone, but needs extra room on the top and doesn’t work with some of the pads that connect over USB-C thanks to its oddly positioned charging port. It’s automatically detected by Android and most games on the Play Store, and easily configured in emulators like Dolphin. With about a hundred hours sunk into it, I have no complaints.
8BitDo officially supports Android and Windows via Bluetooth in the version I bought, which is on sale for $42 at the time of writing. There’s a slightly newer one that also supports the iPhone and Xbox — you can tell it apart by the official Xbox logo in the bottom-right that doubles as a power button. That one’s $50, which is still pretty dang reasonable when an official Xbox controller is $70.
8BitDo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller — $42