The Case for the £150 Joystick

As Street Fighter IV readies its UK assault, gamers have the opportunity to splash out on a special controller that costs more than the console! Why?

This is it fellers (and fellers' partners be warned), the next generation of Street Fighter has arrived. Quite bizarrely there has been an uncommon show of lunacy among gamers who may not have been born when Street Fighter was huge the first time around. This would be 1992, the year Wayne's World, Basic Instinct and Lethal Weapon 3 were pulling in the crowds at cinemas.

Showing enthusiasm for Street Fighter IV, a fast-paced versus fighting game that boasts outlandish moves and special effects, is normal behaviour. Street Fighter fever on the other hand should be seen as a serious condition that can lead to the purchase of, among other things, a £150 joystick.

But that's pennies where Street Fighter is concerned. Back in 1992 gamers thought nothing of burning £150 to import a Super NES (Ye Olde Nintendo) version of Street Fighter II that had graphics you could draw better yourself and music that sounded worse than a ring tone. Well, not really that bad but you get the picture.

Anyway, back to this £150 joystick. It bears the  name "Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition", which could cost you a tenner just to have printed on the box. The most astonishing realisation is that, all things considered, the Street Fighter IV Fight... blah, blah, blah is in fact quite keenly priced. In other words £150 buys you the sum of its parts. No, really.

You deserve to know why at least to decide for yourself. So we asked our contacts at Capcom and Mad Catz, who licensed and manufactured this thing, to offer a bit of insight. It begins with a bloke called Seth, apparently, and whatever he says goes:

"We didn't just endorse that stick, we essentially designed it," informs Leo Tan, UK PR manager at Capcom "Seth Killian, our Head of Community in the US, has a tremendous amount of input into how the stick should be built, ensuring it would satisfy even the most demanding stick user. It's spec-for-spec a true replica of the stick and buttons you would use in Tokyo arcades, right down to the placement of the buttons."

We suppose knowing that Street Fighter IV has a good chance of success influenced a lengthier than usual R&D process too, as Alex Verrey who heads up Global PR at Mad Catz explains: "Street Fighter IV really gave us the opportunity to do something unique and show the gaming community what we as a company were capable of. Internally, this was a dream project for many of our designers and developers who have grown up with Street Fighter and love the franchise to this day. With Street Fighter, we were prepared to do whatever it took to produce the worlds greatest Arcade FightStick."

Yes, but... £150? Isn't this inviting disaster in today's financial climate?

Alex, for his part, seemed rather flustered that we still couldn't see past the price tag: "If you buy a Ferrari, a replacement gear stick knob could cost more than a second hand car! The idea for this stick was to make the finest arcade stick known to man and to absolutely not compromise. We knew this was very important to the hardcore faithful so the first decision we reached was to use the same genuine Sanwa components that are found in the real arcade machine. Not ‘arcade like' components you understand but the IDENTICAL commercial grade components."

Leo is more light-hearted: "The game is quite playable on a pad, certainly, but for those of us who were there in '92, it's indispensable. It's your samurai sword - the stick embodies your fighting spirit."

Okay. But who is likely to buy a £150 joystick? Is this gamble going to pay off for Capcom and Mad Catz long term, even if, according to Leo, "The ancient urge to SMASH SOMEBODY'S FACE IN (in a non-physical and safe fashion) is too primal to limit to a segmented audience."

For the answer to this we tracked down Anil Das-Gupta, a guy who's ‘down' with the Street Fighter crowd to the extent that he organises nationwide tournaments.

"In terms of people that are getting it, basically *everyone* is getting it! A lot of the hardcore guys didn't own a next-gen console, but SFIV has finally made them get one. For many of the hardcore fraternity, we aim to recreate the arcade experience in our own homes," says Anil.

"Although getting a couple of Mad Catz joysticks is very expensive, if you combine the costs of a large LCD TV, an Xbox 360, and two Mad Catz sticks, the total outlay is still far cheaper than buying an arcade cabinet and yet that setup is convenient to get to and can be used for all fighting games in the future."

We've since found out that the Street Fighter IV arcade machines cost around 10,000 Euro. In that case Anil's credit-card logic is sound... but still extreme!

To be fair on Alex at Mad Catz, who we have rather put on the spot today, the company will launch a range of Street Fighter IV controllers this week. There's the Arcade FightStick (£60-70) that is smaller than the TE and doesn't use the same components but is still considered top notch. The cheapest option is the Official Street Fighter IV FightPad (£25-35), which puts the required six-button layout on a more traditional console pad. Don't ask us to explain the six-button thing here!

We've spent many hours with a Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition and can confirm that it is a special piece of kit - big and heavy so it won't bounce off your lap or slide along the table, you can rest your hands on it to focus only on your moves, and the Sanwa buttons and stick lend your attacks surgical precision. If you only own one £150 joystick in your lifetime, this would be the one to go for (which isn't as glib as is it sounds because there are myriad alternatives available from the Far East).

The question here really seems to be how much do you love your Street Fighter?