– What happens when you take one of the most reviled gaming controllers in history and you remake it in 2018? Well, you get the Hyperkin Duke Today we'll compare and contrast it to the original and tell you whether or not it's worth the 70 bucks

Stay tuned (upbeat music) Here it is, the Hyperkin Duke It is now available at GameStop and the Microsoft store and I believe Amazon too, as well as overseas So we already reviewed this on WindowsCentralcom, Jez Corden did an awesome deep dive into it

Make sure you go read that I don't wanna go too much into the details here, as you can go and check out what he has to say, but I wanna talk a little bit about this controller So this came out in 2001, it was part of the original Xbox and people absolutely hated it It's called the Duke, but it was also called the Fatty at the time, which is absolutely hilarious And it was just too big for most people

In fact it was so bad they later revised it just a few months later to make a slimmed down version So what's new with this controller for 2018? So it's obviously revised a little If you go and buy the original one, like we have here, you can't actually use it with the Xbox or a Windows 10 PC This version you can, it does have now a removable cable where you can attach it to your PC and just use it like a regular controller or use it with Xbox Now I know you're saying why not wireless? And it's a really good question

As it turns out, Microsoft kinda controls that technology, that is there are no third party controllers that use the Xbox wireless system, which is a little weird and unfortunate as that would've truly made us a really unique device, but yeah, you do have to use this wired all the time, but at least you can replace that cable now The other massive change is gonna be that center button So on the original one it had this large Xbox logo and it looked kind of okay, but it didn't do much Well they updated this time with a clever OLED version and it actually shows the animation from the original Xbox when it boots up As cool as it is though, I think there's a bit of a missed opportunity here

Hyperkin should create some third party software which allows you to control that or maybe even display your stats or something else It seems like kind of a lost opportunity as after that screen boots up it really doesn't do much Other additions include the new shoulder buttons, which were not included in the original version, so you have those now They're not as good as the shoulder buttons found on a true Xbox controller, but they actually work pretty well The triggers are also updated, so the original triggers had more of a solid spring mechanism to them and they were kinda hard and had resistance to them

Didn't feel very good, these new ones are modern design, so they feel much better and are much more responsive The buttons also have a little bit of a tactile feel to them, a little bit more pointy, but they click very well And the joysticks were also updated to have more rubber grip on them Overall it feels very good So in case you're wondering how this actually feels, it's actually kinda fun and there is a bit of a learning curve when you go to use this, for instance that Y button, it feels a little bit different when you reach for it with your thumb

That's partly because those buttons are on an angle on the original version, whereas they're not on a modern Xbox controller I do have to say though, I actually do enjoy using it, despite the fact that it is rather huge, it feels kinda nice I'm not saying you wanna necessarily use this all the time, but I've been using it for PC gaming for a while and it's actually kinda clever I really enjoy using those joysticks as they feel very nice and they have nice height and depth to them compared to the original controller As far as holding them for long times, the new controller is actually significantly heaver than the original, which is pretty funny

It's already a massive controller, but you're looking about 340 grams which is around 30 to 40 grams more than the original controller, so that's not insignificant I didn't really find it too hard to handle for a very long time, but your mileage may vary and if you have tiny hands, well you may steer clear of this But for $70 I think this is actually a pretty good buy The build quality is fantastic, I've had no issues with my controller whatsoever and if you're very nostalgic for Xbox history, and we've talked about that in the past, that people do like to buy this stuff, well this is an excellent purchase and I think Hyperkin did an outstanding job It's also quite fun to see a joystick that was so shamelessly disrespected back in 2001 brought back to life in 2018

Goes to show you that we're living in amazing times So there's a quick look at the Hyperkin Duke controller Now if you want more information about this make sure you go to Windows Central to read our full review and let me know in comments what other Xbox history you wanna see brought back to life If you liked this video give us the thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe Thanks for watching, take care everybody