Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is both a prequel and a spinoff, depicting the adventures of the original USS Enterprise before James Kirk assumed command. It features the return of Anson Mount as Captain Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock, all reprising their roles from Discovery. The cast will be filled out by new actors playing other characters from the original series, with Celia Rose Gooding as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel and Babs Olusanmokun as Doctor M'Benga.

Unlike Discovery, however, Strange New Worlds is intended to be more episodic, with standalone installments similar to TOS and TNG. New characters joining the cast include Christina Chong as La’an Noonien-Singh and Melissa Navia as Lieutenant Erica Ortegas. No premiere date has been given yet, but it's likely to debut after Prodigy, Discovery and Picard finish their upcoming seasons. 

You can watch the Star Trek Day event live on YouTube, while you'll need a subscription to Paramount+ to watch Strange New Worlds when it drops next year.

Between fighting a war with the Klingons, traveling to the Mirror Universe and jumping forward in time 900 years, the USS Discovery hasn't done a lot of actual exploring in its first three seasons. That'll hopefully change in its fourth year with Michael Burnham in the captain's chair, and the season premiere drops on Paramount+ November 18th.

No new footage was shown during tonight's Star Trek Day event, but interviews with some of the cast hinted at an increased role for Hugh Culber, as well as the return of fan-favorite Saru. You can watch the Star Trek Day event live on YouTube, while you'll need a subscription to Paramount+ to watch Discovery when it drops later this fall.

Today marks 55 years since Star Trek debuted on TV way back in 1966, so Paramount+ threw a huge party to celebrate — as well as to reveal a few tidbits about upcoming shows and seasons. First up was the Nickelodeon Studios cartoon, Prodigy. We got our first full trailer, as well as the date it will hit the streaming service, at the end of October. 

The show is about a bunch of wayward teens who find an abandoned Starfleet vessel, the USS Protostar, hidden underground. They don't know how it got there or what to do with it, but luckily a hologram of Voyager's erstwhile captain is there to guide them.

Voice actors include Dee Bradley Baker and John Noble, as well as the return of Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway.

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This post contains minor spoilers for season two, episode four of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

If you were a Star Trek newbie, today’s episode of Lower Decks, “Mugato, Gumato,” is not a good place to start. It’s packed full of references across the franchise, including Beckett Mariner, Sam Rutherford and Brad Boimler engaging in a not-so-friendly match of anbo-jyutsu, the appearance of not-so-enlightened Ferengi and even the episode name, which references how no one can seem to agree on how to pronounce the creature whose name is spelled “mugato.”

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However, after a season and a half, the show has already settled into a groove, and as a streaming program there’s no reason why “Mugato, Gumato” would be anyone’s first episode. Paramount+ would only pull up this one if last week’s “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” had recently been watched. With less need to be accessible, that leaves a show like Lower Decks free to dabble in continuity and in-jokes for the long-time fans.

Fan service is often derided for being gratuitous at best, and an act of gatekeeping at worst. After nearly 55 years and over 800 episodes aired, Star Trek has a lot of baggage that can be intimidating to a newcomer. The Abrams reboot in 2009 tried to wipe the slate clean but was still bogged down by decades of cultural knowledge, with even Trek casuals expecting to hear phrases like “beam me up” and “I’m a doctor!” It found itself trying to appease multiple groups of fans and ultimately thrilling few.

And yet, despite its deep dives into Star Trek lore, Lower Decks can still be a great entryway for new fans in how it chooses to subvert so many long-time franchise tropes. Both newcomers and hardcore Trekkies get to be on the same page when it comes to the all-important question: What comes next?

In that vein, “Mugato, Gumato” is a fun ride. The main plot revolves around the re-discovery of a rare species only previously seen in a rather forgettable TOS episode, with the USS Cerritos charged with finding out how the animals got so far from their home planet. It’s not the most thrilling adventure on the surface, which makes it a perfect assignment for the crew of the lower-tier ship. Boimler and Rutherford are assigned to the away team, which would normally spell doom for a pair of chronically unlucky ensigns.

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Instead, the rest of the group is captured by a group of Ferengi poachers, leaving Brad and Sam in the unlikely and awkward position of saviors. But rather than have them step into the role of “action-oriented leading men,” they instead embrace their unique skills as “nerdy supporting characters.” Meanwhile, it’s the captain and bridge crew who get stuck with the b-plot of helping out a stranded trader whose ship they accidentally destroyed.

After Boimler and Rutherford save the day with a well-thought-out PowerPoint (yes, really) it ends up being the senior staff who isn’t fully informed of what happened on the planet. This is in direct contrast to a previous episode where Boimler has pointed out that it’s not their place to know what’s going on. Captain Freeman just shrugs the whole incident off as some “environmentally conscious Ferengi,” apparently unaware of the two ensigns’ key role in getting the ultra-capitalist Ferengi to change their ways in favor of a more profitable path without resorting to violence.

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It also ends up being good for continuity, in how it reconciles the two versions of Ferengi we’ve seen throughout the franchise. Here, it argues, they really are the same species in the end, just that the offensive, retrograde Ferengi from “The Last Outpost” hadn’t found a less overtly evil way to make money.

“Mugato, Gumato” may have trafficked in old tropes, but it also twisted them in a way to teach the characters and audience something new about themselves and the franchise. Or, as Boimler and Rutherford would say, “If we’re both unhappy, it means we’ve reached… a compromise!”

The following contains spoilers for episodes three and four of 'What If...?'

There’s a Twilight Zone episode I’m particularly fond of called “A World of His Own,” where a writer discovers that everything he speaks into his dictaphone comes true, and he can undo it by simply burning the tape. By the end, even narrator Rod Serling is shown to be a creation of this character’s imagination, making this one of the few TZ episodes where the fourth wall is firmly broken. It took an entire season for that classic program to feel comfortable enough to play around with its format and premise like that. However, we’re only on the fourth installment of What If…? and it’s employing similar tactics, though with a less comedic tone.

The first two episodes of What If…? revolved around a simple switch, trading one character for another and seeing how things play out as a result. Last week’s hinged on a minor change — Hope Pym joining SHIELD — that spiraled out with huge consequences. This week shows us a simple substitution again, putting Dr. Christine Palmer in the car with Stephen Strange and killing her off in the accident that in another timeline, destroyed the gifted surgeon’s hands instead.

Her death ends up being the catalyst for Strange studying the mystic arts, and the events shown here pretty much follow the same lines as they did in the film. It’s kind of unlikely, given that a motive to fix one’s injured hands is small peanuts compared to an attempt to undo death. But we still see Stephen training in Kamar-Taj, learning about the Eye of Agamotto and eventually fighting Dormammu. As far as the timeline is concerned, everything is pretty much the same.

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Except Stephen, who can’t get Christine’s death out of his head. He ends up going back to the moment of the crash and trying to save his girlfriend’s life, only to fail again and again. Since her death was the catalyst for him to learn magic, he can’t use his powers to save her. She is a fixed point, an unchangeable event (something Doctor Who fans will be well acquainted with).

For the viewer, this raises a big question: If Christine’s death is really such a concrete event in the time stream, how did we end up with “our” Stephen Strange back over in the regular MCU timeline? Here, the episode inspired an intriguing possibility: that perhaps this Doctor Strange will succeed in changing the timeline so that Christine isn’t in the car and he destroys his hands, in fact making this episode a prequel to the 2016 film. That would have been a rather mind bending twist that certainly would have made this series more important, though still not essential, to the MCU.

Alas, it was not to be, with Strange descending further and further into his obsession to the point where even our narrator is concerned. And for the first time, a character becomes aware that they are being observed and actually calls the Watcher out. Like in the Twilight Zone episode, the sequence is intended as a demonstration of power, showing that Strange has reached the level of awareness to notice the fourth wall. But still his powers are limited; he’s not cognizant of the audience (though Uatu the Watcher is, having addressed us directly earlier in the episode) and his pleas for assistance ultimately go unheeded.

Marvel Studios

Compared with the first three episodes, this one ends on a dark note. That’s actually truer to the original comic series the show is based on where, freed from the constraints of long-term continuity, the writers could take the story in whatever direction they wanted. If they wanted to kill everyone they could and would, since the main timeline was to go unaffected and future issues of What If…? would just hit the reset button.

Whether the animated version will go the same way remains to be seen, but with the fourth episode an underlying sense of continuity has started to develop: The tentacled creature from "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?" makes a reappearance, and Uatu acknowledges to the audience the stories he’s already told, which at the bare minimum hints that these episodes are meant to be viewed in a specific order. What If…? may be a diversion, but there seems to be a destination on the horizon.

This article contains mild spoilers for season two, episode three of 'Star Trek: Lower Decks.'

This week’s episode of Lower Decks, “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” manages to squeeze two references into its title: a season one The Next Generation installment called “We’ll Always Have Paris,” and the name of a main cast member of Star Trek: Voyager, Lieutenant Tom Eugene Paris. But aside from that clever bit of wordplay, the title also carries a deeper meaning: That as much as we’d like to forget about the more embarrassing moments of the Star Trek franchise, they still happened and they weren’t all bad. Even, and especially, Voyager.

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Viewer reactions to Voyager have been rather polarized over the course of the 26 years since it premiered. Back in the ‘90s, many fans were excited to have a “real” Star Trek show again, one that took place on a ship that was constantly exploring, unlike the comparatively stationary political drama of Deep Space Nine. But clunky writing soured many people’s opinion on Voyager, and toward the end of its run the show was known more for Seven of Nine’s skintight outfits and its slate of guest stars of the week, including Jason Alexander and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

After the show went off the air, the franchise stopped moving forward in its timeline, choosing to explore Starfleet’s founding in Enterprise and rebooting the entire universe completely with the 2009 Star Trek movie. While fans were thrown a bone with a brief cameo by Admiral Kathryn Janeway in the last TNG-era film, Nemesis, Voyager would essentially disappear from the Star Trek canon until the appearance of Seven of Nine in episode four of Picard.

Trae Patton

For fans of The Next Generation, Picard had its upsides: We got to see Troi and Riker as a family, and Data got a better sendoff into the afterlife. But for fans of Voyager, it was anything but positive, with the death of a supporting character and a rather grim existence for fan-favorite Seven of Nine.

Star Trek: Lower Decks rolls back the clock a little bit, as it takes place a year after the events of Nemesis, making it our first real view of the Star Trek universe’s immediate future after TNG, DS9 and Voyager. The Dominion War is over, Romulus is under a new regime and the crew of the USS Voyager are basically celebrities after seven years spent in the Delta Quadrant; Picard takes place nearly twenty years later, when the luster would have been gone.

Matt Kennedy

Here everything is just shiny and new and worthy of commemorative plates — a bit of a weird thing to exist in a post-scarcity culture, but this is a comedy series, after all. And in this week’s B-plot, Brad Boimler is looking to get one of his plates signed by a special guest to the USS Cerritos: Tom Paris. Or, as Brad refers to the former Voyager crew member, “Creator of Fairhaven, Captain Proton himself” as well as the first human to break the transwarp barrier. Straight off, that’s a reference to three of the goofiest, oddball and some say worst episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. And just in case you forgot what was so bad about the last one, Mariner asks “is he still a salamander?,” because that is a thing that happened in the episode “Threshold.”

Undeterred (and perhaps even encouraged) by the weirdness, Boimler is all hyped to meet his hero. Even after the ship’s system doesn’t recognize him and won’t let him through any doors, he takes to the Jefferies tubes to make his way to the bridge to meet Lt. Paris.

In a way, it feels like a metaphor for how the fandom feels about Star Trek: Voyager now. While everyone admits it had a lot of dumb moments, those actually made it more endearing. The famous line “there’s coffee in that nebula” would inspire astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti to bring a replica uniform with her and wear it on a mission back in 2015:

And who can forget the infamous “Tuvix” episode, where crew members Tuvok and Neelix were merged into one being thanks to a transporter accident? Though the resulting individual was healthy and happy, the decision was made to force him to split back into his component persons, inspiring the recent internet rallying cry “Janeway murdered Tuvix.” Even Janeway actor Kate Mulgrew entered the debate, responding to a tweet from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When you’ve got politicians involved it’s not really a fandom in-joke anymore.

Maybe it’s time to give Voyager a bit more credit. It’s not as good as TNG or DS9, but it still has its fair share of fans. I remember a time when it seemed like it was constantly running on Spike TV (now the Paramount Network), as opposed to Deep Space Nine, which is seldom rerun due to its serialized nature. Last year I sat down and rewatched the entire Star Trek franchise, including Voyager, and saw quite a few episodes I had missed the first time. I found myself enjoying some of it, cringing just as often, and eventually remembering why I had stopped watching the show for a while back when it aired. In general, I feel like the show’s biggest problem was missed potential, like the way the conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crew members was quickly smoothed over, how it underutilized many of its cast, and why on earth did Harry Kim never get promoted.

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However, it’s not the job of Lower Decks to explain or redeem Voyager. Boimler and Tom Paris are only the B-plot here, with the main drive of the episode being Tendi and Mariner’s mission to pick up a package for Doctor T’Ana as well as Rutherford’s quest to find out how a certain dead officer is alive again. The episode just asks us to consider what it would be like to be a Starfleet officer and hear about all of Voyager’s adventures in the Delta Quadrant. Weird and goofy? Yes. But honestly, they’re also pretty cool.

This post contains major spoilers for episode three of What If…?

After two fun, zippy stories that focused on the idea of swapping one character for another, What If…? pivots to a darker outcome in its third installment. This time, the entire Avengers slate is wiped clean, with Nick Fury left to sort out the mess. It’s a nod to the animated series’ comic inspiration, plus a sign that the show isn’t willing to settle into a routine.

The original comic book, also called What If?, often see-sawed between silly and serious scenarios, like what would happen if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four, Gwen Stacy had lived or if Dazzler became Galactus’ herald. With no need to follow continuity, the creative teams of each issue in the anthology were free to take the story wherever they wanted, often in dark turns that ultimately illustrated why the original timeline was the best.

Marvel Studios

However, the What If…?Disney+ series has taken the opposite tack, showcasing one scenario where things are largely the same level of good and bad (for Captain Carter) and another where events went decidedly better (unless you’re Peter Quill). It’s likely the creators didn’t want to immediately scare away casual viewers with anything too grim, keeping the stories as light and breezy as their cinematic inspirations.

The third episode doesn’t just change this course by featuring a more pessimistic scenario, however, it also steps away from telling us upfront why things are like this. The first two episodes had Uatu explicitly pointing out the moment of divergence. This time around, we know something is different — the prospective Avengers are being murdered — but exactly how and why is a mystery.

Marvel Studios

It actually makes for a more interesting show because rather than playing a half-hour game of “spot the difference,” we become engaged in speculation about why this is happening. We know things would be vastly altered if Tony Stark or Bruce Banner dies, but now we get to play detective, plumbing our knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for suspects and motives. Instead of a straight-up adventure tale, this episode was a murder mystery.

Whether it’s a successful mystery, I’m not entirely sure. Hank Pym is not someone I had considered as a suspect, even with his distaste for SHIELD and the Starks in the main timeline. The point of divergence turns out to be Hope Pym joining SHIELD and being killed on a mission, which leaves Hank alone and bitter. Why he chooses to kill five uninvolved strangers in an attempt to hurt Nick Fury is murky at best. I’d originally pegged the murder of the Avengers as a Hydra plot, which would have actually help shore up the retcon from Captain America and the Winter Soldier of SHIELD being taken over by Hydra — it’s rarely explored why Hydra let the Avengers get as far as they did in the main timeline, rather than strangling that potential opposition in its cradle.

Ultimately, the point of the episode is to set the viewer up for even darker stories to come — at least one future story is focused on zombies, a nod to the rather successful line of “Marvel Zombies” comics from over a decade ago. It also does some tidying up for the main continuity as well, reminding the viewers that three of the early MCU films took place in the same week, and that Loki is stilla jerk. It may not be essential viewing, but What If…? is certainly a useful footnote.

The following contains spoilers for season two, episode two of 'Star Trek: Lower Decks.'

I’ve been a Star Trek fan for most of my life, and yet I still chuckled at this Onion video released after the first J.J. Abrams installment came out back in 2009: “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable.’” Star Trek isn’t to a lot of people’s taste, J.J. Abrams’ among them. He’s said in interviews he never really liked Trek and was trying to make it more like Star Wars. (This was six years before The Force Awakens came out.) The reboot films were a breath of fresh air after four years of no original Trek content, and they did get some new fans into the franchise. Some of those novices would later dip their toe into the water of TV Trek and found that they did actually enjoy it a lot, despite its slower pace.

However, despite the franchise’s strong TV track record with shows like TNG and DS9, the Paramount+ era has been taking its cues from the Abrams films, which isn’t surprising with executive producer Alex Kurtzman at the helm. Alongside Roberto Orci, he’s one of the two screenwriters behind 2009 Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as a J.J. Abrams collaborator on Alias and Fringe. Given the box office numbers of the Abramsverse films it makes sense to put him in charge, but it still made a lot of long-time Trekkies groan as we had hoped for a return to the kind of shows we grew up on.

After three seasons of heavy action on Discovery and the jaded grimdark of season one of Picard, the first season of Lower Decks injected some levity back into the franchise, with parody that went up to, but not quite over the line. It couldn’t, since it was intended to be canon. It had to fit alongside TNG, DS9 and Voyager. So it packed in plenty of references to keep the wiki addicts over at the Star Trek-centric Memory Alpha busy, while indulging in old tropes like drunk Klingons, arena battles and the occasional omnipotent being. It also took some direct swipes at the live action Trek shows, like how crew members always seem to die in the most low-tech ways like being impaled by spears or how of course the holodeck is used for sex stuff.

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But those references were always in a more general sense, framed in a “wouldn’t X be ridiculous” way that only long-term fans with deep knowledge of the franchise would fully understand. Until this week’s episode, that is, where crew members of the USS Titan specifically call out the Enterprise D and its galactic cruise ship mentality. Shakespearean plays and string quartets? Peace conferences? How utterly boring compared to the constant run-and-gun that the Titan seems to have been stuck in since last season. They judge the value of their work based on how exciting it is, and think that William Riker must have been bored to tears being stuck on that ship for seven years.

Of course, TNG fans know it was anything but boring for Riker. He’s been locked in a mental institution, trapped in an alternate future and even had god-like powers for an episode. And he likes performing in jazz concerts with his trombone!

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None of this slander sits right with new crew member Brad Boimler, who transferred over from the USS Cerritos at the end of last season. The Titan’s pursuit of the dangerous Pakleds has the young lieutenant junior grade in a constant state of panic as he mans the flight conn position, a big change from quietly toiling away on the lower decks of his old ship. But he’s recognized that this is where the opportunities for promotion are, and soon finds himself on an undercover mission with his fellow bridge crew. At least, it’s supposed to be undercover — the other Titan members quickly get them embroiled in a shootout and facing certain death.

That’s when Boimler takes the opportunity to tell his crewmates how he really feels. “I’d love to be in a string quartet. I love that when Riker was on the Enterprise he was out there jamming on the trombone and catching love disease and acting in plays and meeting his identical transporter clone Thomas. That stuff might not seem as cool as what you guys do, but it’s Starfleet, all the way.” His confession elicits similar confessions from the other team members, before they manage to find a way out in classic technobabble fashion.

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For years Star Trek has always danced around the question of whether Starfleet was a military force. It employs naval ranks and the ships are outfitted with phasers and photon torpedoes for defense. But its stated purpose was exploration and other activities that help tie the vast Federation together. The Abrams films spent all their time reacting to one crisis after another — the crew didn’t start an actual mission of exploration until the very end of Beyond, and there hasn’t been another film since to follow up on that.

Both DS9 and Discovery engaged in wars with the Klingon Empire. On Enterprise the crew ended up hunting down the Xindi with a cadre of trained soldiers on board for its third season. Even Voyager had to deal with the constant accusations that they were a conquering force as they struggled to get home. Lower Decks is our first look in a while at a Starfleet dedicated to exploration, with the crew of the Cerritos specializing in “second contact,” that is, getting communication and trade set up with the planets that flashier ships like the Enterprise meet in their adventures. 

So Lower Decks has always been a sort of commentary on the greater Star Trek philosophy, but it’s never been as blatant as Brad Boimler saying, “I didn’t join Starfleet to get in phaser fights. I signed up to explore, to be out in space making new discoveries and peaceful diplomatic solutions. That’s boldly going.”

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The Onion video takes old school Trek fans to task for being gatekeepers, for wallowing and fetishizing things that other folks find boring. The new era of Trek has stretched the definition of what Star Trek could be, expanding into new genres and injecting a little action to sate the appetites of modern audiences. But Lower Decks is the first time I’ve seen pushback from within the franchise itself. The show is basically saying, “Sure, Star Trek can be exciting, but there’s a reason it became popular in the first place!” Let’s hope that with future programs like Strange New Worlds, Alex Kurtzman is listening.

The Nintendo Switch is pretty popular, but its included Joy-Cons aren’t for everyone. Some players feel the detachable controllers are a bit small for their hands. Many players miss having a regular D-pad. Whatever your reasons for wanting to upgrade your Switch controller situation, know that there are alternatives — it’s just a matter of picking the one that fits your needs. We tested out a bunch of Switch controllers to see which are worth your money.

For casual gaming: Joy-Cons

Honestly, there’s a lot to like about the included Joy-Cons. They come right in the box and can be separated from the system so two people can play. The system also includes a special gamepad grip so you can hold them in your hand like any standard controller. So if you are in fact, happy with your Joy-Cons, there’s no need to switch them out. Just tweak them a little depending on your needs. Find them a tad too small? FastSnail’s matte rubber shells can make them a little easier for large hands to hold, and Hori’s Analog Caps can make the thumb sticks grippier. 

There’s really no good way to replace the Joy-Cons entirely with a third-party copy. Some Joy-Con-like controllers won’t connect wirelessly, while others lack key features like vibration or an NFC reader. But there are some tradeoffs that are worth it. For example, if you like to play a lot of 2D platformers in handheld mode, Hori’s D-pad controller will restore the beloved cross-shaped directional button to your gameplay. If you’re looking for something that’s also more comfortable in your hand, the company’s $50 Split Pad Pro is also worth a look. It has a D-pad on the left side and a more ergonomic grip than your standard set of Joy-Cons. But it also makes the entire assembled Switch a lot chunkier.

If you like to play your Switch with groups (or you’ve experienced the dreaded “drift” issue), chances are you’ve picked up one or two extra pairs of Joy-Cons. Which means you’re going to need a place to charge the spares. PowerA makes an excellent $25 charging station that can be plugged into your Switch dock (or any device with a USB port) and handles four Joy-Con-like controllers at once — that includes third-party gamepads as well as Nintendo’s own Switch-compatible NES controllers (see below).

For action-packed games: Pro-level controllers

Sometimes you just want a standard controller to play your favorite action titles — and standard in 2020 means something like you’d get packed in with an Xbox, with grips for the heels of your hands, shoulder buttons and triggers, two thumb sticks, a set of four buttons on the right and a D-pad on the left. Nintendo knows that, which is why it created the Pro Controller. This first-party gamepad pairs easily with the Switch and features a D-pad on the left, while still maintaining features like the infrared sensor and vibration that might go missing on third-party alternatives. The only downside is the $70 price, but avid players of games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will appreciate the refined controls and increased comfort.

While you can plug your Pro Controller directly into your Switch dock to charge, it’s not the most elegant solution. PowerA also makes an attractive $25 dock that accommodates both Joy-Cons and the Pro Controller, which should keep your gaming area nice and tidy.

When the price of the Pro Controller is a bit rich for your blood or out of stock, PowerA makes its own version with the same arrangement of buttons. The Enhanced Wireless Controller skips the rechargeable battery in favor of AAs, which has its downsides, but at least when it runs low on juice you can just pop in a new pair of batteries and get right back to gaming. Unfortunately, there’s no USB-C port to connect with so you’ll have to pair the device wirelessly — which can be finicky and may take a few tries before your Switch recognizes the controller. It also lacks vibration, so you won’t get tactile feedback in games where it’s helpful. And the plus and minus buttons are placed a bit closer to the center, so those with smaller hands will have to reach a bit further to press them.

If you’d prefer not to have to recharge — or buy batteries for — your gamepad, PowerA also makes a wired version of the same controller that connects via USB. It’s got the same look and feel, but you won’t have to struggle as much with getting your console to recognize it, and there’s no potential for wireless lag, making it ideal for fast-paced shooters and fighting games. The included cord is 10 feet long so it should reach most couches just fine.

While most third-party controllers tend to mimic the Xbox style of gamepad, anyone more familiar with the PlayStation’s distinctive DualShock design will probably prefer the $50 Pro 2 from 8BitDo. The retro-styled controller has the same general layout as the classic SNES gamepad, but adds twin thumb sticks, palm grips, back buttons, control remapping and even sensitivity adjustments. It’s truly the Swiss Army knife of Switch controllers.

For old school gaming: Niche and retro controllers

Twenty years later and the preferred controller layout for Super Smash Bros. players is still the one made for the GameCube, which is why today it’s still possible to buy new gamepads straight from Nintendo. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Edition GameCube Controller is identical in layout and design to the original gamepads, though now it connects via USB so it can be used with the Switch. The only downside to the reissue is that it doesn’t come in a bold shade of purple anymore.

However, if you’re still sporting a classic GameCube controller with its proprietary connector, you can also pick up an adapter that will let your Switch accommodate up to four old-school gamepads. Nintendo sells one on its store, but the Y Team controller adapter is also a good alternative that costs less and can be bought at Amazon.

But you might not want to be tethered to your console — especially if you have fond memories of kicking back on your couch with a Wavebird in hand to play GameCube games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Killer 7. PowerA’s Nintendo GameCube-Style wireless controller is the closest you can get to recreating that feeling short of plugging a few RF dongles into a GameCube adapter.

What if your retro tastes go even further back, say to the NES and SNES era? If you’re subscribed to Nintendo Online, you have access to over 100 classic titles, so you might want a more “authentic” controller to use with them. Nintendo Online subscribers can buy retro-style wireless gamepads directly from the company, though the $60 set of two small, rectangular NES controllers will remind you why we’ve moved on from that design. The dog-bone shape of the $30 SNES model is more hand friendly and can still be used with the NES games, so it’s a better use of your funds should you decide you want to recreate your childhood gaming experiences.

If you don’t need an exact copy of your beloved childhood gamepads it’s worth looking at 8BitDo instead: It makes a variety of classic-styled controllers that add just enough modern features to make them useful for a wider variety of games. Its models are almost all wireless, and there are some design changes to make the controllers more comfortable and easier to use. We’ve already recommended the DualShock-like Pro 2, but the $45 SN30 Pro also offers features like dual thumb sticks and vibration in the dog-bone controller style.

If you’re looking for something more portable, however, the $25 8BitDo Lite is smaller and swaps out the thumb sticks for two D-pads, keeping the four button arrangement on each side. It’s great for 2D games and it even matches the color scheme of the Switch Lite. 

Before you try any of the controllers listed in this guide, remember to update your Switch to the latest firmware — the 8BitDo controllers will run on any version, but the PowerA gamepads need your system to run at least version 6.0.0.

“Luxury” isn’t really a word you associate with gaming controllers, but when you’re spending $200 on a gamepad, that’s essentially what you get. The fact is just masked by words like “Elite” and “Pro.” One of the companies making controllers at that level has been Scuf, a brand that even collaborated with Microsoft on an official high-end gamepad. Now the team at Scuf is taking its expertise to the Xbox Series X/S with the new $170 Instinct and $200 Instinct Pro, which bring back fan-favorite features like an interchangeable faceplate while also improving the buttons and switches.

I was sent the more expensive Instinct Pro, though rest assured that even the cheaper model is still high quality. They each come packaged in a patterned black box that feels more appropriate to jewelry than gamer gear. The standard consumer version will come with a black faceplate, but the one I received was printed with a map pattern in black, gold and blue. I really like it, even if I’m not a fan of the FPS games it's meant to invoke. The faceplate comes off with a firm pull, though five magnets underneath ensure it’ll stay put during your gaming sessions.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The d-pad also comes off easily when pulled with two fingers, but my attempts to dislodge it with my left thumb while playing were thankfully ineffective. However, the package does not include a replacement. What is included besides the controller is one USB cable, two AA batteries and two convex thumbsticks, one short and one tall. To swap these in you need to pry the faceplate off then pull at the thumbsticks so forcefully it feels like you're doing something wrong. The replacements can then be snapped into place, though it might take a few tries to get the pegs to line up with the holes on the back of the joysticks.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The front of the gamepad’s layout contains the standard array of buttons plus a mute switch for any headset that may be connected to the 3.5mm port on the bottom. The back, however, is a different story. Scuf has included four buttons just south of the battery cover, which can be mapped to duplicate any of the front buttons. However, unlike the long paddles found on the company’s other controllers, these instead consist of two flaps molded into the controller casing that jut out slightly, along with two buttons in between them. Your middle fingers should rest comfortably in the two concave nooks the buttons create, and flexing your fingers backward is enough to push those flaps, so you never have to shift where your fingers rest as you do with your thumbs on the front of the gamepad and forefingers on the shoulder buttons and triggers.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The triggers on the more expensive Instinct Pro have also gotten a bit of a redesign. Previous Scuf products allowed players to adjust the sensitivity and install trigger stops that gave them a shorter pull, like a mouse button. Now the triggers can be adjusted on the fly thanks to a set of switches that can flip the buttons between the traditional long pull like you’d prefer in a driving game, to a shorter mouse click for weapons fire. Each trigger can be adjusted independently, too, which can make the feature useful for even more genres.

The last new feature on the back is a button that allows you to switch between three different configurations — the controller comes preprogrammed with settings for FPS/battle royale, sports and racing titles. The settings can be changed on the controller itself by holding down the profile button until it blinks and then holding down the paddle you want to change and the button you want it to emulate.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Aside from all the bells and whistles, the Scuf Instinct Pro has a really nice, premium hand feel. It’s solid but not heavy, and the grips have a rubberized hexagonal pattern that allows airflow to prevent excessive palm sweating. I can’t tell you how it feels compared to other Scuf controllers, but matched up against the standard Xbox gamepad or recent releases like the Turtle Beach Recon Controller, it feels premium. Which it should, given that it’s so much more expensive. Like all Scuf products, the Instinct and Instinct Pro are for professionals and other people who take their games seriously enough to spend hundreds of dollars on gear.