The Street Fighter IV Stick - Making Console Fighters Playable Again?

I'd spent the greater part of the month trying to decide whether or not to pick up the collector's edition of Street Fighter IV - yeah, it's a quality package, but in the long run, all I care about is having the anime disc and the downloadable outfits code (and, sure, having Ryu's headband as a result of preordering the edition from GameStop isn't too shabby either). Well, for Christmas, my girlfriend decided on my struggle for me, presenting me with a receipt saying Street Fighter IV for the Xbox 360 has been paid in full for me and now I begin the nearly two-month struggle of "owning the game and not being able to play it." What this does turn my attention to, however, is the quest to save money for the game's arcade stick. Here's where I ride the fence - if someone tried to sell you a MadCatz controller for $150, would you be interested? Unfortunately, the answer to that would probably be "no."

Regardless, I'm giving MadCatz and Capcom the final free pass, if you will. After owning a few embarassingly low quality accessories from Mad Catz for the Playstation (One), I vowed to never again take part in the company's offerings. Even though the company seems to have a bit of a universal bad rep for its quality, the company has surprisingly rised from the ashes to not only score the rights to produce a bass guitar controller for the white-hot Rock Band franchise but also the Street Fighter IV arcade stick. Seeing as an arcade stick is a necessity for proper 2-D fighter execution, the announcement no doubt many Street Fighter fans sour in the stomach. You know in anime where a character does or says something ridiculous and everyone within a five-mile radius falls to the ground in one frame of animation? I can honestly picture Street Fighter fans doing the same the first time they read MadCatz was handling their beloved arcade stick. And who can blame them? Not only does a proper arcade stick exude excellence in quality (something which MadCatz has been lacking stemming from popular opinion), it's going to be (and already is thanks to HD Remix) a necessity thanks to the Xbox 360's maneuer pile Microsoft calls a d-pad.

Seemingly most people think arcade sticks are only for Street Fighter nerds, but when you move up to a competitive level or decide to get serious about such a fighting game, you'll quickly learn to favor the stick. Not only does the stick itself provide for tight control, the button layout removes the need to uncomfortably wrap around the triggers for certain attacks. And even these items are only at face value. As combatants tear into the system, advanced techniques such as edging/pianoing come into play to dramtically increase the odds of successfully pulling off mid-combo super moves. I'll leave such edging/pianoing explainations to EventHubs, a very excellent site for competitive Street Fighter strategy, but know going in - there's a reason why you see people favoring arcade setups.

The Street Fighter IV stick is set to land on Feb. 17 and a bit of information has, thankfully, upped the opinion of the stick a bit, but, it has seemingly failed to change public opinion about MadCatz thus far. The reason being is the joystick will utilize the very same Sanwa joystick and button parts used in the Street Fighter IV arcade cabinets (all set to scale, of course). This definitely gives me a little hope in picking up the $150 stick and not only will it expand the Street Fighter IV experience, if the stick sells well, companies would do quite well to cash in on the Xbox Live Arcade/Playstation Network fighters - Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 will finally be playable! This very stick could be the savior of arcade-based games on the home systems so this puts a lot of weight on MadCatz's shoulders - especially since it carries the legendary Street Fighter name on it.

Only time will tell, but, hopefully, the Street Fighter IV stick won't be as useless as some of those awful NES accessories I have lying around ...