A debate has emerged in the competitive Smash Bros scene over whether professionals competing in tournaments should be allowed to dictate which controller they use. While typical tournaments may mandate the classic Gamecube controllers for the experience, the Evo 2018 has announced that it will also allow the arcade-style Hitbox Smash Box to be used instead.
The Smash Box is an arcade-style controller with a flat worktop and a number of large, face buttons. Each of them translates to available commands on the Gamecube controller, but turns them all into buttons, rather than the sticks, DPADs and shoulder buttons of the original. That means there are buttons for the analog stick, the DPAD, the C-stick, and all of the various face buttons, all color coded to help translate which are which.
Smashbox will be legal at Evo under 2 conditions.
1) No software or hardware macros.
2) Every button only allows one direction or input to be mapped.
See you at @Evo !— Joey Cuellar (@MrWiz) April 16, 2018
In theory, it shouldn't give any kind of advantage, but for those who play traditional fighting games on arcade-style controller platforms, it might make their transition to Smash Bros play that little bit easier. There's no guarantee that it'll help, but it's certainly a different way to play and not everyone are big fans of that.
As Kotaku points out, its inclusion in the new Evo 2018 tournament is rather controversial. Some argue that it makes players weaker, while others say it makes them better. The big talking point though, is that it fundamentally changes the way the game is played and that's typically a bannable offence for competitors. In this case they'll get an exception though and that means that should someone win with one of these, it's going to cause outcry among gamers who see it as an unfair advantage -- whether it is one or not.
