About a year and a half ago, I was publicly humiliated on Tekken's smallest
stage. It was a FlyQuest weekly. It didn't mean anything. And Joe Crush
one-shot me. And even Harada himself
said that that was awesome. And today, I'm coming out of retirement to talk
about the Junk Food Swirl. It is a leverless controller fight stick pad,
all of those combined, and it has balls.
So, if you're not familiar with Junk Food Arcades, they are a leverless fight
stick company based in the United States. And they have their flagship
product. It is called the Snack Box Micro. There's many different
controllers that one might use for fighting games, such as Street Fighter
or Tekken, if you're going to get one-shot. There's your traditional gamepad, such as the PS5 controller,
which is the one that most people prefer because of the D-pad. And then there are
more legacy controllers, such as a fight stick or a arcade stick, as, you know,
the old ones might call it. Here we [music] have a leverless controller. Uh
it's sort of a leverless controller. It's kind of hard to describe what this
actually is. It's a um it's sort of a weird hybrid of
>> [music] >> a leverless controller and a gamepad, I guess. And so, Junk Food decided that,
you know, why have both a PlayStation controller and an arcade stick, when you
can just combine the two? And I guess that's how the Swirl came to be. On the
left here, we have a more WASD traditional layout of a keyboard. And
then we have a more fighting game-centered layout here on the right
of the Swirl. The elephant in the room here are these two giant
At the bottom of the controller, we have their thumb domes. And they are Hall
Effect sticks, and they offer superior accuracy and responsiveness. But before
we continue on, let's take a look at what else you get inside the case. It
actually comes with a really nice carrying case. This is nice. It comes with a angled
USB-C to USB-A sleeved cable. Yeah, it's
about 6 ft long. So, you know, when you're at a at a setup or something,
good amount of length between you and the screen even though your opponent
might be like right next to it. Hate those guys. You got some propaganda
stickers. Very nice. And then it comes with a welcome to the
Swirl family with the Swirl QR code.
Now, this is epic. Overall first impressions, it looks
cool. I mean, it's a design that I don't think I've ever seen.
One really interesting thing though is
you market this towards fighting game players and like controller players cuz
it's supposed to be the best of both worlds, but this WASD layout here is not
really what we use on leverless controllers.
Like on leverless controllers, it's usually just the bottom three buttons
here. And then there's actually a center button here for jump. Jump or up. Like
it's So, I'm I'm surprised that there's no actual button for that so that you could
like map it to that. So, that's really interesting. Because
I get the vibe more that this is like just a replacement of a keyboard. Um and
then they just added some
thumb domes. The pattern here is I'm not the biggest
fan of this pattern. Uh there's a whole bunch of different fight stick patterns
layouts like this. I'm more used to this sort of layout where it tapers down.
Some of them they like to go straight across like this like the Razer Kitsune.
On the top, we got the USB-C port. Nice to always have the universal connector,
have a detachable USB-C cable. My fight stick is not detachable and every day I
worry that it's going to break. On the bottom here, you know, we got a nice
foam sort of like cushioned bottom, which is nice because when you use
these, you usually don't actually use them on desks. Uh they're usually built
to be put on your lap. This button is the home button. This is the select
button. This is the start button. We got the touchpad button here. Then we
got the edit button and the profile button. So, I'm assuming you can assign
different profiles to this and then you can kind of hot swap it to between
games. So, before I continue, I want to talk about getting one shot in Tekken.
Nobody talks about that I actually took two games off of Joe Crush. I just got
one shot. So, that's it.
So, one thing I do notice about these buttons is I believe they are all key
switches. They feel like Cherry MX browns.
Uh if I rip one OF THESE OFF, WOAH! YEAH,
these look like just Cherry MX clears. Um you know, I'm sure somebody in the
comments will correct me about that. And I guess they are just hot swappable, so
you can just rip them out of the PCB and stick them back in. With all these junk
food leverless controllers, they try to keep it pretty thin.
Uh so, they use these key switches instead of the typical like Sanwa Denshi
buttons that you find in regular fight sticks. Definitely prefer those. They
just feel like I'm at an arcade machine, not that I'm old enough to know what
that's like, but this is good fun. One thing I do notice
is that there's already a bunch of fingerprints. Holy moly. I mean, my
fingers are pretty grimy. I I don't know why. I wish I could fix that. Um
I'm a stick player. I have the Etokki Omni, and the artwork is impossible to
swap on that. This one, they advertise it as it's a it's a just a magnetic top
plate. Plexi off. Woah! There's the
plexi taken off. Uh and now we got the artwork. I mean,
it's just a piece of paper, [music] which is great because this is the most
effortless way of taking off fight stick artwork that I think I've seen in a long
time. This being magnetic is actually awesome. You can clean this so easily. I
can just run it under some water and give it a nice wash.
So, I'm assuming these buttons are like
X, square, triangle, circle. R3, L3 are actually here,
but then these do actually click down, so that's really I mean, we'll see. I
guess we'll test them out, which I guess we'll do. Me and Bella are going to fight
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30-day money-back guarantee. All right, we're here in the web app now
for the Junk Food Swirl. And I mean,
looks like you can remap quite a few things. You can change the controller
name. You can change [music] the analog sensitivity. They got firmware updates,
connected. You can disconnect it by just clicking it.
You There's I don't know why you would do that. You can just rip it out of the port. I mean,
it seems like a lot of people actually have complaints about the software for this thing.
It might have been a little undercooked. I mean, the UI is great. It looks easy
enough. You know, you got different profiles, so you can like swap. You got
up to five profiles. You can import profiles from other people, so you got
that sense of the Swirl community. And then you got export profile files. So,
that's how you share your Swirl profile with the Swirl community. So, here we
have the basic variant of the Swirl. There's actually a second variant called
the [music] multi-console. The basic variant of the Swirl only works on
Switch and PC, but the multi-console version works on Xbox and PlayStation,
which is something to keep in mind because most tournaments nowadays are run on
exclusively PS5. If you're going to bring this to tournaments and you're
going to, you know, game it up and go 0-2 in the tournament, uh you know,
>> [music] >> you can't connect this without either the Brook converter to play PS4 to PS5,
which adds a little bit of latency, or spending the money for the multi-console
[music] variant. Let's game.
No, that doesn't >> [laughter] >> No, no, no, one more time. Don't use that one, Carter. I swear, bro.
>> is going to use that one. So, it does seem like these four buttons here are
the actual buttons to be using. So, it's like your typical Street
Fighter layout. It still is weird to have jump up here.
Like I said before, most leverless controllers, the jump is actually down
here, and you're usually just playing with like the three bottom ones, [music]
cuz I mean, you're just trying to hit quarter circles. So,
other than that though, it feels very good. How do you feel with the the loudness of
the >> keys, I slam my keys pretty hard when I
play the game. I mean, I just like how the keys feel
when I [music] am gaming it up. I mean, it's just as responsive as I would
expect from a Brook board. I will say though, >> [music] >> I'm just trying to see the sensitivity
on the keys, because with Sanwa buttons, like the lightest touch will actually
activate the the button. On these keys, there definitely is like an actuation
point. So, it's nothing like too crazy, but when I like I can hit here, and
nothing is actually happening on screen.
But then like when I actually get to the point of actuation, there is. So, it is
like just a regular key switch. It's not like a a typical arcade switch, the
Sanwa button that, you know, we all know and love. I do usually play on my lap
though. I don't have enough space on my desk at home. This feels pretty good.
I'm going to say something that's a big no-no. It's almost like mall grabbing your skateboard.
I'm going to use the >> [music] >> the stick.
The domes. The dome. I'm going to use the thumb dome. The thumb dome,
it's just not for fighting games. See, you just don't get like the precision
you get with a D-pad or like WASD with the thumb dome. I mean like I just have
no idea. There's no click. I mean, it's it's doable, but I would not recommend
using the thumb dome. So, I'm not absolutely smurfing. I've
been matched against a platinum player. He's [music] going to be playing Ed here. I mean, this guy has no idea who
he's playing against. He's like, "Who is LTT Benchmark?"
Boom. Round one is a dub for me.
Oh, no. I got him with the wake-up level three
as the pros do.
Guys, do I rematch him? You have to rematch, right? I'm going to use the
thumb domes here, and you're going to just see me get slammed because I don't
know I don't have the precision that I want with these domes. At least in the
fighting game domes. Oh, I swapped back to the keys.
>> [laughter] >> I like the keys too much. Okay, he's [music] just I mean, he's
just throwing things out in neutral. This guy got no neutral. So, why don't
we hop into another game and we'll test out the thumb domes in like a shooter.
Okay, so we got Cyberpunk going. I mean, this is the smoothest Cyberpunk
has ever been for me. Um 5090, by the way.
Uh Here we go. I'm going to give you that cinematic E3 trailer look. If you just
love fight sticks and you just want it to be your
everything. I mean, I guess that's what this is for.
Like, you just never have to own like a PlayStation controller ever again. You
know what? Honestly, I'm finding aiming quite easy, and it's actually quite fun.
I mean, this is pretty doable. I mean, you got to get used to the layout
in a way. This is not bad. I thought it was going to be way worse.
I can't lie. Oops, sorry. It's Tekken time.
All right, I'm [music] challenging you to Tekken 8. I saw you got one-shotted.
I've never played Tekken 8. Haven't played Tekken since [music] like Tekken 2,
but I'm feeling confident. Okay. Also, I'm using an Xbox controller. I have it.
Yeah, you better not use the left stick. You better use the D-pad.
You're using special style? >> Yeah, me too. I don't know what these buttons do.
Oh, no. I have I don't remember a single combo.
Oh, wait. I actually just got I lost. Please, please, please. I lost.
[music] It's going to kill. I know it's going to kill. I'm not going to watch.
Oh. You hate to see it. So, if you didn't
know, >> [music] >> the trick to Tekken is is you don't hold down back like Bell is doing. What?
Cuz then you get launched like that. He burst. He burst.
Oh my goodness, dude. He just keeps ripping rage art. >> Special move. Special style.
Oh, you died. It doesn't kill.
Oh, watch this.
What? The He had a vacuum. Okay,
>> [laughter] >> guys. He's just mashing mashing the rage art every time.
>> they put it in the game if they don't want me to do it? That's so true. No, no, no. You leave me no other choice.
>> I got him back. I got him back. He hit
me in the doinker. >> [laughter] >> Can't you get me though? All right. I
saw how you lost. I'm going to GET IT HERE. NO.
OH, I I DODGED. BOOM. This kills you. When I do this and
then I'm going to learn. I learn. No.
Yeah. Subscribe to ShortCircuit. No, don't
say the price. Oh, So, you two can beat Jake Bell
Bellavance uh for the small price of I think it's $175
[music] is the basic. The multi-platform, which is the one you're going to want to get, is about $225.
I think you'll understand if this is for you. I mean, overall, I had a lot of fun
with it and it was fun finally redeeming myself [music] in Tekken. Thank you,
Jake, for having me on ShortCircuit. I threw.
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