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I bought this for the $35 deal which is the Tekken 6 game with the wireless joystick. I don't really play fighting games much so I'm not going to judge the merits of the Tekken 6 game. I do play the old school Super Street Fighter II, but that's about it. The game has received good reviews from gaming sites so I'll bow to them on the game itself.
I bought the bundle to get the joystick. I love old arcade games like Pac-Man as well as shmups like Raiden IV. Many XBLA games like Castle Crashers also are meant for an arcade joystick. And this joystick delivers. It's a light controller that sits quite comfortably on your lap or desktop. The base is of a good size. Not too big or too small. It has the throw distance of an arcade stick so it's a longer throw than the joysticks you may have grown up with on your Atari or Commodore.
It is a wireless stick so you won't be tethered to the 360. There is no force feedback or rumble so you'll miss out on that. It is an 8-way joystick with a square gate. It has 8 buttons.
"2-way gates": these only allow movement in the up/down or left/right directions. Galaga is common game that uses it.
"4-way gates": these only allow movement in the up, down, left, right directions. Pac-Man is the most well known game that uses it.
"8-way circular gates": These detect movement in the up, down, left, right, and diagonal directions and you won't feel "corners" when you spin the stick around. These are commonly found on 90's American arcade machines like Street Fighter 2 and have a "bat-shaped" top handle. HAPP manufactures these joystick parts.
"8-way square gates": These detect movement in the up, down, left, right, and diagonal directions and you will feel a "corner" in the diagonal directions (or coordinal depending on orientation). These are commonly found on general Japanese arcade machines and usually have a "ball-shaped" top handle. Sanwa and Seimitsu are the popular manufactures of these parts.
"8-way octagonal gates": These detect movement in the up, down, left, right, and diagonal directions and you will feel "corners" in each direction. These are commonly found on later Tekken machines. Sanwa and Seimitsu sells replaceable gate parts for their main joystick lines.
If you think your D-pad on your game controller is fine, you really should try out a joystick. It makes a world of difference. I was playing Pac-Man Championship Edition and my scores instantly went up and Pac-Man went exactly where I wanted him to. I was no longer frustrated that Ryu was jumping across the screen when I meant to walk across the screen. Combos in Street Fighter instantly became easier to pull off.
This is my first experience with a joystick on the Xbox 360 and I've been extremely happy with it. People complain that it doesn't have "Sanwa guts". Well, if you must own Sanwa guts, there are Youtube tutorials on how to replace the guts of the joystick. Me personally, I don't see a need. If the joystick parts wear out for whatever reason, I'll replace parts as needed.
There are some nitpicky things that I don't know if they only apply to this stick or all sticks.
1) I'll use Castle Crashers as an example. If I play a game with a regular 360 game controller, that 360 controller becomes controller 1. If I turn on the joystick, that becomes controller 2. Perfectly reasonable. When I then launch Castle Crashers, and I am starting a game, it won't let me play with the joystick as controller 2 unless someone is playing with the 360 controller at controller 1. This is a problem with the Castle Crashers programming. So I go to turn off the 360 controller and then turn off the joystick and turn it back on, hoping the joystick is now controller 1. However, the controller stays controller 2. I believe this is a 360 issue rather than the joystick issue but without a different branded joystick to try out, I can't verify.
2) It is an 8-button joystick with the LT, RT, RB, and LB buttons mapped to 4 of those buttons. However, when it comes time for cycling through menu options, I can't use those buttons. So it's frustrating because I have to go back to turning on a regular 360 controller so that I can cycle through menus and options. If it's simply LT, RT, RB, and LB mapped to those buttons, those buttons should behave like LT/RT/RB/LB on a 360 controller. Frustrating.
3) this is more a problem with many 360 games than with the joystick itself. Many games don't allow you to remap the buttons. They only have certain templates to choose from and invariably, all these templates are meant for a regular 360 controller so they aren't ideal for the button layout of a joystick. So for a game like Castle Crashers, it took an adjustment to learn the buttons because I had played it so much for a regular 360 controller.
Reason #2 is the reason why I didn't give 5 stars (especially since reason 2 links into reason 1). But as an actual gaming experience, I can't effuse enough about how much I love this joystick. If you play games that don't need dual analog sticks, you must own a joystick like this one. If you play any game that is arcade-like, you owe it to yourself to get a stick like this. I even use the joystick for simple stuff like Uno (if I happen to have the joystick out, it doesn't improve the experience enough to actually go digging the stick out of a drawer).
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 11, 2011
Platform For Display: Xbox 360Edition: LimitedVerified Purchase
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2011
Platform For Display: Xbox 360Edition: LimitedVerified Purchase
