leverless arcade stick

A variant of an arcade stick where the traditional joystick is replaced by four buttons representing the four cardinal directions that would normally be controlled by the stick.

Popularized by the Hit Box from the US, these sorts of controllers were developed to allow fighting game players who had primarily played online on PCs with computer keyboards to use a controller with a similar form factor for offline events, where consoles are the preferred platform for organizational purposes. The ease with which leverless controllers allowed directional inputs to be hit, along with the improved ergonomics that an all-button design allowed for, saw the form factor explode in popularity throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s.