Oh, and don't bother paying anything more than retail. That's a joke.
Anyways, to the review...
If you pay anything more than $90 for this stick, you will be severely disappointed. Not only will you be required to void the warranty on the controller to prevent the joystick from breaking -but replacing it with a new one will bring the cost up to near 'Tournament Edition (149.99)' prices.
What you are paying for is labor and an arcade stick box -REMEMBER THAT. Quality arcade controllers run from $100 to $200 because of the labor involved, the inner circuitry/wiring, and the cost of the parts. For $80 you are getting a stupidly good deal on a box, controller functionality, and labor. A control pad for any system will run you about $50, so you are only paying $30 for the cost of high quality wiring, additional materials (obviously, the stick is big) and additional labor. It is a fantastic deal.
Here's what you are getting pretty much for free: The joystick and buttons. The parts inside are good for anyone new, but they will not last without your help. I'm talking a month or so max without personal modifications; with the joystick itself lasting you from a day to a few weeks(they are defective, check Madcatz' official site for info. They mention a small amount only, but I can guarantee you will not be risking it with $80 worth of equipment or more). IF YOU CAN FIX IT YOURSELF, AND DON'T FEAR OPENING IT UP AND VOIDING THE WARRANTY -THE PARTS ARE REASONABLE. THE FIX IS EASY.
I have fixed about 20 sticks for people since these have been released all with the same problem (more have brought them in after it was too late to fix). Don't get shafted.
Replacing the parts inside is quick and easy however slightly costly. I don't recommend this unless you are absolutely sure you need to. This controller however, was built and sold for you to replace the parts inside. The craftsmanship and wiring are all 100% newbie friendly. You can know nothing about electronics and replace the parts -all you need is the ability to turn some screws and pull some plugs. At best you will be paying $50 in addition as well as waiting weeks for the stores to restock their parts.
Like I said earlier, remember that you are buying a BOX and LABOR not a reliable Arcade Controller. That means that whatever you tack on above the price of this controller is simply giving it away to the seller, and a Box and Labor are definitely not worth anything more than what the retail on this controller is! The box is beautiful and is designed well. The quality of the wiring and the actual controller functionality for your specific system are fantastic. The actual buttons and joystick are DEFECTIVE!
UPDATE! 2/19/2012:
It has come to my attention that people are still interested in this item! I had thought interest would wane after production stopped for this particular model, but it seems I was wrong. When I wrote this review (very aggressively apparently), it was nearly a week after release and during a resurgence of fighting games. People were buying arcade sticks in such quantities that every brand and type was sold out! If that wasn't bad enough, these controllers were defective outside of the box. A washer malfunction caused the joystick to carve into the PCB (and permanently destroy the circuit) right out the box. The buttons were also prone to sticking. My personal stick suffered from both these problems, and I had to repair these issues for several others. This was a disaster, and I really wanted to stress the fact that what people were purchasing would stop working within a week or so. The silver lining was the fact that the going rate for an arcade stick box, wiring, and control pad to modify were far more expensive than this device! Not to mention the labor involved with the chance of failing. It was a beauty of engineering on the inside, but the inputs were terrible. That isn't the case anymore!
I purchased a PS3 version of this stick almost a year later to gut and make a dual console stick, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the problems had been fixed! In fact, the stick felt much better than before. I used it stock for a few weeks off and on, and from what I can tell Madcatz resolved their error. The buttons didn't gain any extra sensitivity, but they are still good for beginners.
Today, the latest version of this stick is the WWE Brawl stick. You shouldn't have any issues with it! I don't prefer the art, but buy in confidence! This stick is still beautifully engineered on the inside for easy upgrading. I would invest in this one rather than a similar priced Hori simply because of the simplicity of the wiring inside Madcatz' product. Hori sticks in this price range have parts soldered into place onto circuit boards, so modifying them takes extra work and materials!
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If you're looking for a great arcade stick box to mod this is the thing you need. You don't need to solder anything due to everything being quick disconnects.But for the regular consumer this product... well at least mine... was a piece of crap.
Defects:
-Joystick sticking to the right due to loose washer
-5 out of the 8 buttons stopped registering more than %50 of the time before my sanwa parts came in
-Screws holding the stick were stripped and the stick fell through the box the first day I recieved it.
For $80 a controller should not do that, no matter what you're buying it for. I was never rough with it or slammed the buttons. I'm a very light tapper and I'm very relaxed on the joystick. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm technically savvy when it comes to arcade sticks this would have been a nightmare purchase for me.
Edit: Raised the rating a bit due to being mod friendly.
Best Deals for Xbox 360 Street Fighter IV FightStick
I bought this back in April '09, during the craze when arcade sticks were impossible to find. I would have preferred the tournament edition, but this popped up on Amazon and I grabbed it. I've been very happy with it overall. I'll assume most people are looking at this as a controller for Street Fighter or other fighting games. I have played a fairly heavy amount of matches on this stick for the past several months with no difficulties, and I highly recommend it.I first became interested in switching to a stick because I wanted to start playing charge characters. This is the typical Bison/Blanka/Chun/Guile sort of character whose moves are something like charge back 2 seconds then forward + kick. First and foremost, charge motions just don't work very well on a normal controller's directional pad. Additionally, one of the easiest ways for a newbie to learn charge characters is to sit on a down-back charge quite a bit. This stick has a square gate on it, so that the motion of the stick has four corners along the boundary of the stick's action. This makes it extremely easy to charge down and back at the same time because there's a corner there to tuck into. Advanced players don't rely on the corners in the gate for inputs, because if your reflexes are amazing and precise then you get quicker motion between directional inputs by pushing the stick just far enough to trigger the input. But for a newbie, a square-gated stick is a godsend for learning to play these charge characters. For roll-motion characters like Ryu or Ken, some people may feel more comfortable using the analog stick on a regular xbox controller, or even the d-pad (if you grew up playing SF2 on the Super Nintendo, you can probably manage.) Using a stick for those characters definitely takes practice, and while 90% of the good players use sticks for ALL characters, if you're just dabbling in fighting games and use a fireballin', dragon punchin' character, then you may not want to put in the time to re-learn the game on a stick.
Street Fighter only requires 6 buttons: three punches and three kicks. The 8-button layout on this stick allows you, if you wish, to set some function to the two black buttons on the extreme right which would not be there on an actual arcade cabinet. You could, for example, set them to be all three kicks or all three punches if you had trouble hitting all three at the same time to trigger your ultra combos. In practice, I found that to be awkward. Even though I'm a player who regularly uses shifting hand positions in Rock Band / Guitar Hero, I found it much easier just to hit the buttons simultaneously rather than try to shift or use a pinky to hit the black buttons. I imagine most people will feel the same, and the black buttons will be used in navigating menus (they're the right trigger and right bumber buttons on a normal xbox controller, basically.) For 4-button fighting games like BlazBlue or the 3D games (Soul Caliber, DOA, etc.), you'll probably use the top three white buttons and the left-most white button on the bottom row. I've played several fighting games with this stick and found the button layout to be great for all of them with the right setup.
There's a turbo function you can assign to any button, but no serious player would use it. Not because it's unfair, but rather because your inputs need to be precise in a game like this. It's very easy on a stick to hit the buttons quickly and repeatedly when you need to, so turbo is unnecessary even for things like Blanka's electricity or Chun's lightning legs. And if you're turbo-ing into moves like that then you aren't using the more specific inputs you'd need to combo into them, so you're handicapping yourself anyhow. As far as I'm concerned, turbo isn't really a valuable feature for fighting games played at anything more than a novice level.
The buttons themselves are supposed to be the weak link in this setup, and are reputed to be easily replaced if you wish. The buttons on mine have all held up, and they input just fine.
The stick must be broken in a little. When you first get it, you may notice that after you let the stick return to neutral the character is still moving as if you were inputting a direction for a second or so. After less than an hour of play, this went away.
Sticks take a bit of getting used to, not just in terms of inputting commands but in terms of positioning it comfortably. I've found that I can position the stick okay on my lap for play, but some people may have trouble finding the trick of doing that right. This stick is not nearly as wide and heavy as the tournament edition, so there's a chance you'll find it shifting around on your lap too much and affecting your play. Again, I adapted to this stick pretty well, but you may or may not. Some people play their fighting games standing up with the stick on a stand of some sort, and if you have a setup like that in front of your TV that's great. For me that wasn't viable, but I found this stick manageable anyhow.
You can move a switch to determine whether the stick is controlling the equivalent of the normal controller's d-pad, left analog or right analog stick. This makes no difference in fighting games, but allows you to use the stick for other games where you must control movement with one of those inputs in particular. I tried using it to play Pac-Man Championship Edition and found the control to be a bit clunky. But to be fair, the square gate is not well adapted to Pac-Man (as he doesn't move diagonally) and maybe if you were more practiced with the motions you'd have more success than I did.
Finally, the stick is wired instead of wireless. Wireless has become pretty standard for this generation of video game consoles. But the wire is plenty long for most living room setups, and because the wire uses a USB connector you can actually use it for PC gaming if you were so inclined.
Overall, I rate this product quite highly. It did exactly what I'd hoped it would do: make me better at Street Fighter with charge-attack characters. It has held up for months of heavy play. Obviously there are some people here who had lesser experiences with the stick than I did, but I can only rate what my own experience was, and it's been 100% positive.
Honest reviews on Xbox 360 Street Fighter IV FightStick
This stick is an excellent choice for anyone looking for the upperhand in Street Fighter IV or any other 2-D style fighting game. The casing is great quality and its size makes it very portable. The standard buttons and joystick are decent quality and are a fine choice to play with.However, those willing to go the extra mile are apt to find this stick's true potential. While doing so will void the warranty, if you open the stick up you will find that it is very customizable. For mine, I ordered all Sanwa replacement buttons and a Sanwa joystick with an octagonal restrictor plate (the square restrictor late is standard). It is a bit risky to do this kind of thing if you are not familiar with how to do it but it's also quite easy to figure out if you are patient and have a bit of technical savy.
With all the replacement parts, my stick is equal to the Tournament stick in every way accept for the empty area to store my cord. Since that's a feature I don't even use on my Tournament Stick (yes, I have both) it's a moot point.
If you are looking for a stick that will let you compete properly, this stick is a fine choice. If you are looking for a Tournament Stick and can't find one or can't afford one, the customizing options open to you on this stick are a great alternative. I can't recommend it enough!
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