ARMS is adding a custom controls option in an upcoming patch

By Alex Donaldson

Nintendo’s newest IP was already pretty good about control customization, but it’s about to get even better.

ARMS comes with a lot of different control options. You can play with motion controls with the joy-cons detached from the Switch console, of course – that’s the method shown in all the trailers, but the game is pretty great about supporting everything the Switch has to offer and giving the player ‘waggle’ free alternatives.

So, yeah, you can play with the Pro Controller, or the Switch Controllers attached to the joy-con grip, or even an individual joy-con in its turned-sideways NES format for easier two-player action – but you still had to work within the confines of pre-set button configurations.

But – no more! ARMS is finally embracing one of the key concepts of modern fighting games on console – custom button configurations. The feature was originally announced and shown off by the official Japanese ARMS twitter account, but now Nintendo UK is also getting in on the act.

Big news, fighting fans! #ARMS Ver. 3 will allow you to remap the controls to the buttons of your choice! How's that for flexibility? pic.twitter.com/AE8DmijTzO

— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) September 8, 2017

The change will arrive in version 3 of ARMS – that’s the next patch, by the way. That’s alongside new character Lola Pop, a clown-like fighter.

The animated image attached to the post on twitter should pretty much be all the explanation you need – ARMs will have a neat new menu accessible from character select that lets you adjust all of your buttons. You can also change the controller sensitivity for when you’re playing with motion controls.

This is especially useful since some of the default configurations of the more complicated controllers such as the Pro Controller actually left a few buttons unused, and some of the default configurations could lead to accidental triggering of the rush super attacks depending on how you liked to grip your controller. It’s a nice little addition, anyway.

ARMS was a pretty great game to begin with as we detailed in our ARMS review, but it had some problems with a lack of content. Nintendo has been remedying that with a series of patches and updates which has so far included a range of quality of life improvements, plus new stages and characters. ARMS seems to be getting the same sort of post-launch support Splatoon did – so this is likely not the end of it by a long shot.