Genki Opens a Digital Controller Museum Ahead of Its Manta Reveal

Gaming accessory maker Genki is opening a different kind of exhibit this week: a digital museum dedicated entirely to game controllers.

The Controller Technology Museum is an online experience that unpacks the small mechanical inventions that shaped how we hold and play games, timed to lead straight into the Kickstarter launch of Genki’s most ambitious hardware yet, a controller called Manta.

One room opens each morning at 7:00 AM Pacific in the run-up to Manta’s Kickstarter debut on August 20. Room 01, “Move,” is live now and traces the analog stick from the Atari 5200’s potentiometer joystick through the Nintendo 64’s optical encoder, Sony’s DualShock, and the Sega Dreamcast’s Hall effect sensing, before landing on the tech inside Manta itself. The remaining rooms follow a similar format, each pairing a piece of controller history with a peek at how Manta approaches the same problem:

• Room 02 – Feel: opens August 16
• Room 03 – Program: opens August 17
• Room 04 – Pull: opens August 18
• Room 05 – Press: opens August 19

As Genki puts it in the exhibition’s introduction, “If you’ve played games long enough, there’s probably an old controller you can still feel in your hands.” Room 01 builds on that idea all the way to its final exhibit, which closes on Manta’s own stick design: a magnetic sensing setup Genki calls “Float-Tension Adjustable TMR,” letting players twist a collar on the stick base to set physical tension by hand, with dead zones and response curves tuned separately through Manta’s companion software.

Manta itself is shaping up to be a considerably bigger swing than Genki’s past accessories. Early details point to a controller developed around a 2.79-inch built-in display running its own operating system, allowing players to remap buttons, adjust macros and switch profiles without a phone or desktop app.

It’s also expected to support polling rates up to 8,000Hz wired and 1,000Hz wireless, haptic feedback, a dedicated headphone jack, and an “On-the-Fly KBM” button for switching into keyboard and mouse input on the fly, alongside “Genki Forge,” an open developer hub for loading community-made tools onto the controller. Genki says Manta will work across Switch 1 and 2, PC, Mac, Android and iOS.

Genki is certainly setting expectations high. CEO Eddie Tsai says in a LinkedIn post that he truly believes “game controllers are about to have their iPhone moment,” suggesting Manta represents something more ambitious than another premium gamepad with a longer spec sheet.

Whether Manta lives up to that billing is something we’ll only know once units are in hands, but the museum format is a fun way to build anticipation, and worth a scroll through even if you’re not planning to back the campaign. The Controller Technology Museum is live now at controller.genkithings.com, with a new room opening daily through August 19 ahead of Manta’s Kickstarter launch on August 20 at 7:00 AM PT.