FightBox R6 USB Arcade Game Trackball Controller For MAME RetroArch Raspberry Pi PC

I bought the R6 to use it as a controller for games like Golden Tee. Out of the box, the trackball does not spin freely and needed to be disassembled and lubed. There was also a major issue with how the board is wired. Because the board uses a separate x-input encoder, an RAC-C800, for the start, select, left, and right buttons, many games do not work with the controller due to modern games disabling keyboard/mouse input at the same time as x-input. This would not be a problem if the encoder inside was a modern encoder like an RP2040 based board which can switch between x-input, dinput, and keyboard emulation. However, the included RAC-C800 lacks this ability. In order to make the controller work with all games, I removed the RAC-C800 and replaced it with a Waveshare RP2040 One to make those buttons count as keys on a keyboard.

After unpacking, the trackball didn't work properly and was quite stuck. I opened the box and found that the trackball unit was full of dirt and very sticky. It was obviously already heavily used and not new. However, after cleaning, everything now works fine.

The many buttons are great, but only the 3 main Sanwa buttons work via Rawinput. An additional DirectInput controller is used for the other buttons, and they only work if the program used allows parallel operation. That's absolutely fine, as the trackball unit only supports 3 buttons as standard.

Otherwise, everything feels very good and is well built. The price-performance ratio is excellent. If a new trackball unit had been installed, I would give it 5 stars.