With these shortcomings known, let’s talk about an area of the WaveDash that surprised me: the D-pad. Loading up games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 I was impressed at how well the game played on the WaveDash’s D-pad. Every combo direction worked without a problem and activating specials was easy. I think I may have noticed one instance where the D-pad misread my input, but I wasn’t able to get it to happen again, so I will chalk it up to user error. Loading up my favorite controller test game, Mega Man X4, I was again happy with how the D-pad and face buttons responded without any trace of perceivable input lag. I was even able to pull off a Zero Mode challenge in Mega Man X without much hassle outside of the normal trolling such a run provides.
I can also confirm that the controller works as intended across GC, Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch. Battery life has also been excellent with my rechargeable batteries giving me about 12 hours of play per charge. The WaveDash even has a handy sleep mode built into it in case you forget to throw the power switch! One last thing: the Z button sucks. I didn’t know where else to put it so there it is, the button is stiff and not fun to use.
I would love to see TTX Tech revisit the WaveDash at some point. The foundation of the controller is pretty solid but it needs a few tweaks. The first would be to fix the analog sticks so they don’t scrape and have a better response curve. This would fix 90% of the problems that the WaveDash has and make it a killer option for GC fans looking to get a wireless experience for the system. The last 10% can be fixed by addressing the trigger analog ranges and quality control. Oh, and fix the Z button because it is awful… I can’t stress enough just how close the WaveDash is to being great but landing instead in mediocre territory.
Needless to say, I am left feeling a bit disappointed in the WaveDash. It works well enough for casual gaming experiences but for anything that requires more precision, it begins to choke. Combine this with the build quality issues and your experience can vary wildly between units. All of the experiences I shared previously were based on my better black WaveDash. The platinum WaveDash was significantly worse in most regards when it came to anything analog stick related, as the thumbstick scraping left the controller unable to use its full range. These quality issues are really unfortunate and make the whole thought of picking up a WaveDash a lottery of variable quality. Because of this, I can’t really recommend anyone take the risk with the TTX Tech WaveDash.
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