Home The GameSir Tarantula Pro can mechanically change its button to Xbox or Switch layouts, and it doesn’t do it how you might think

The GameSir Tarantula Pro can mechanically change its button to Xbox or Switch layouts, and it doesn’t do it how you might think

The elephant in the room here. I don’t really like spiders. I find myself the designated spider-remover in our family, mainly because everybody else is screaming standing on a chair when one ambles out for a look around but I am not a huge fan.

The Tarantula Pro from GameSir is unlikely to remove any slight arachnophobia, but it will sort out one other major problem my brain has, and that is getting confused when switching between Xbox and Nintendo Switch games as Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, likes to mess with the layout when it comes to industry standards.

This tricks my brain. I play a lot of shoot ‘em-ups as you may know and the Switch is home to many great ones. The language can get colorful when I invariably use my bombs instead of my guns because THE BUTTONS ARE IN THE WRONG ORDER. Bombs are rare and I need that for later.

Anyway, step forward the non-eight-legged Tarantula Pro from GameSir. I have to admit when I first saw the statement that the face buttons could automatically switch between Nintendo and Xbox lettering I assumed, wrongly, that the buttons may be small screens like we get in the Stream Deck from Elgato. Nope. These are switched by a button combo that cranks a mechanical gear, Industrial Revolution style, inside the control to swap them to your desired layout.

It doesn’t change the order of the buttons themselves, rather it labels them correctly so is still pretty neat, and seeing it in action is also cool.

Tarantula Pro from GameSir

Costing a highly respectable £55 you can order the Tarantula Pro now from GameSir’s site. It can connect to your systems via BlueTooth, a 2.4GHz dongle, or a USB cable. It even has an NFC reader built in so you can use Switch Amiibos as well. Oh and a gyroscope for motion games. Yep, pretty much everything.

We don’t know why it’s called the Tarantula, it does not have hairy legs. Chameleon? Leopard (depending on whether you think one cannot change its spots) maybe? But no, the arachnophobia is strong in this one.

If you want to check out the last GameSir controller we reviewed, then may we point you in this direction?

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Paul McNally
Gaming Editor

Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title published by IDG Media. Having spent time as Head of Communications at a professional sports club and working for high-profile charities such as the National Literacy Trust, he returned as Managing Editor in charge of large US-based technology websites in 2020. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine,…

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