Retroid has offered a brief sneak peek into a variant of the Retroid Pocket Classic that will have six face buttons as opposed to the standard four.
Yesterday, Retroid announced the official name of the handheld silhouette shown in the background of the Flip 2 announcement; the Retroid Pocket Classic. It’s a return to form for the company, having primarily focused on horizontal devices after their initial Retroid Pocket 1 back in 2019.
The OG Retroid Pocket was Different
Since 2019, multiple companies have taken their shot at making a vertical handheld that embodies the same luster that the original Pocket had when it was a highly recommended device. The TrimUI Brick is currently one of the strongest and most pocketable options on the market and easily trumps the original Pocket in performance.
However, the OG Pocket had a key feature that allowed it to stand out amongst the crowd: a six-button layout.
At the 0:13 mark in a new video uploaded today to the official Retroid YouTube channel, a brief glimpse of the new variant of the handheld can be seen with a color schemes similar to that of the Sega Saturn control pad.
Six Buttons? But Why?
We rarely see six button layouts on retro handhelds, and the only assumption that could be made as to why is that so few consoles bare a need for more than the typical four button structure.
Although, we have indeed seen devices release with the additional buttons. The Anbernic ARC-D and ARC-S have them, and so does the oft-forgotten Powkiddy A20.
Systems I like to play on the Arc Pt. 1: Genesis
The Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) had an optional controller that featured six buttons and was one of the main features that distanced itself from Nintendo’s SNES and its diagonal buttons. The Sega Saturn Control pad followed suit and also utilized a six-button scheme. Consoles like the N64 had six buttons on the face, but two were action buttons while the other four were reserved for C-stick directional input. Going further back, most fighting game arcade cabinets also featured six buttons for various controls and inputs.
Now that Retroid has briefly shown off a version of their Classic that features the six-button layout, it should allow more gamers to have an easier time playing classic games from consoles that feature the same. However, in the case of fighting games and N64, it does raise the question of how analog stick controls will translate when a d-pad is the only option.
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