8BitDo’s Pro Fight Pad Has a Screen That Replaces the Companion App

Posted on 25/06/2026 by JC Torres

Fighting game hardware has become its own obsession. Serious players spend as much time agonizing over their controller choice as they do drilling combos, and the debate between joystick traditionalists and leverless converts shows no sign of cooling down. The leverless controller strips the directional stick out entirely, replacing it with buttons for movement, a setup many top competitors swear produces faster and more precise inputs.

8BitDo released its first leverless arcade controller last year and now follows it up with the Arcade Controller Pro, a more performance-focused update aimed at the serious end of the market. The changes aren’t radical but they’re meaningful, touching everything from the button layout to how you manage settings mid-match. It’s a controller that doesn’t try to appeal to everyone, and that’s precisely the point.

Designer: 8BitDo

The button layout has been reworked with smaller, more tightly spaced caps that keep everything within natural reach. The programmable button count goes from four to five, with the fifth positioned on the far left to give the left hand more freedom during long sessions. Each round cap installs from any angle, and five flat lock caps come included to cover programmable buttons that shouldn’t be hit mid-match.

The most notable addition is the 1.47-inch display built into the controller body. It shows your inputs in real time and tracks battery status, but it also lets you adjust settings on-device without opening a companion app. SOCD modes, RGB lighting, and button remapping are all accessible through the screen, so you can make adjustments between rounds rather than leaving your setup to dig through software.

The switches are 8BitDo Core Green low-profile linear mechanicals, co-developed with Kailh specifically for this controller. They’re hot-swappable, and three spare switches, along with a switch puller, are stored inside the controller itself, accessible by lifting the front glass panel. That same interior also houses the accessories compartment that comes with the magnetic wrist rest, which attaches to the front of the unit.

For competitive play, the controller covers the details that matter most in high-pressure moments. A tournament lock on the control panel prevents accidental inputs during a match, and a metal USB-C cable locking mechanism keeps the connection secure so it can’t pull loose mid-fight. Dual USB-C ports, one on the top and one on the side, let you route the cable in whichever direction keeps it out of the way.

Connectivity covers Bluetooth for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, 2.4GHz wireless for Windows, and a wired USB-C option for both. The 3,000 mAh battery lasts approximately 15 hours with RGB turned off. For players who want to go further than the on-device display allows, 8BitDo Ultimate Software V2 opens up full button mapping and macro creation for an even more personalized setup.

The Arcade Controller Pro is available in a NES-inspired colorway as well as a clean white edition, with a fingerprint-proof tempered glass faceplate and a non-slip silicone underside. A price and release date are yet to be announced. The original Arcade Controller was already a strong entry point into the leverless format, but this Pro model has clearly shifted its sights toward players who already know exactly what they want from a fight pad.

The post 8BitDo’s Pro Fight Pad Has a Screen That Replaces the Companion App first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Architect Built a Chess Set Where the Hardware Is the Design

Posted on 25/06/2026 by Ida Torres

Chess has been around for roughly 1,500 years, and in that time, the chess set has been reimagined in almost every conceivable way. You’ve seen the hand-carved wooden sets passed down through generations, the marble ones that live on coffee tables as decor, the kitschy themed sets with medieval knights and castle towers. Every few years, someone tries to reinvent the most iconic board game in history, and most of those reinventions end up looking like a design school project that got a little too excited. Christian Borger’s CS-01 is different, and I think it matters that it’s different in the quietest possible way.

Borger, an architect and industrial designer based in New York, approaches furniture and objects the way an engineer approaches a problem: with an obsession over materials, weight, and structural honesty. His portfolio, if you haven’t gone through it yet, is worth a slow afternoon. It’s full of lightweight furniture experiments, chairs built from tensioned fabric and skeletal frames, tables that look like they’re barely touching the ground. CS-01 follows that same design instinct, just compressed into a 14 x 14 x 5-inch object that you play chess on.

Designer: Christian Borger

The set is built from aluminum, stainless steel hardware, rubber bumpers, and enamel paint. Powder-coated aluminum surfaces contrast against exposed stainless steel, and that word “exposed” matters here. Nothing about the assembly hides from view. The hardware isn’t tucked away or finished into invisibility. It’s right there, part of the aesthetic, because Borger seems to believe that a well-made object shouldn’t have to be embarrassed about how it’s put together. That kind of structural honesty doesn’t show up in chess sets often enough, and it’s genuinely refreshing to see it applied somewhere so unexpected.

The pieces sit at five inches tall, which keeps the whole set compact enough to live on a desk, a shelf, or a credenza without demanding too much space or attention. It integrates into a room rather than dominating one. That restraint is intentional. The design privileges clarity and permanence over decoration, which is a principle worth sitting with. Not because it’s some kind of grand manifesto, but because it’s a genuinely difficult thing to execute. Decoration is the easy default. Clarity requires real decisions.

I’ll be upfront: there’s a legitimate conversation to be had about whether chess sets even need to be redesigned. The traditional Staunton set, which has been the global standard since the 1800s, is already a near-perfect solution. It’s legible, tactile, and elegant in its conventionality. Reinventing it for the sake of reinventing it usually results in something beautiful but unplayable, or worse, something that’s more display piece than game. CS-01 seems fully aware of that tension. It doesn’t abandon functionality to make a statement. The pieces are still readable by proportion and hierarchy. The board is still a board.

Where it distinguishes itself is in how it asks you to notice the object itself, not just the game being played on it. The cold touch of powder-coated aluminum. The small, deliberate weight of a piece lifted and placed. The hardware that catches light at the corner of your vision while you’re thinking three moves ahead. It turns the physical act of playing into something worth paying attention to, which is a pretty ambitious ask from a chess set, and one that CS-01 quietly delivers on.

Borger describes it as a prototype, and it still carries that energy of something being actively worked out rather than finished and packaged. That’s part of what makes it compelling. It reads less like a product and more like a point of view, one that argues you shouldn’t have to choose between an object that performs well and one that rewards close attention. That’s a harder case to make than it sounds. The most interesting design objects are the ones that make you rethink something you assumed was already solved. A chess set, of all things. Here we are.