The X-Arcade stick is truly the best arcade joystick on the market. From its sleek looks to the tight response of the buttons and sticks, there isn't a thing I would change about this multi-platform controller.

I used to run an arcade back in college (Champions in the Marley Station Mall) and one of my main jobs was making sure the sticks were all working properly. Doing any sort of work like this and you quickly realize the heart and soul of arcade controllers are the microswitches. They are used beneath buttons and around the stalk of a joystick to feed input to the board.

If you have a crappy switch you might as well toss the stick. Fortunately, the people behind the X-Arcade know this too and instead of relying on the variety of choices already on the market, decided to create their own switch in-house. The result is a controller that hits the sweet spot of gaming, not too loose and not too tight. I suppose that doesn't mean much if you're playing 1942 or Ghosts and Goblins, but once you try your hand at a little Street Fighter you're going to know exactly what I'm talking abut.

The X-Arcade has two springy joysticks and 18 buttons (eight for each player and one on each side for pinball simulators), along with single player and two player start buttons. The whole thing is built into a sleek panel of plastic-coated black wood. This is, by far, the best looking over-sized stick of the ones I've tested.

The buttons setup is very intuitive, with the eight buttons lined up in two rows of three and one row of two buttons. The sticks are spread apart enough to allow two people to play a game without any elbow mashing.

One of the big pluses of the X-Arcade is that you can buy adapters to use it with your Xbox, Playstation 2, PC or GameCube. I tested mine out on all four and it worked with no problems at all.

Console use is very simple and setting it up for a PC wasn't much more difficult. The stick has three different sets of preprogrammed keystrokes, to change between them you just need to flick a switch in the back while holding a button in. Since the stick plugs into your computer through the keyboard you can test out the layout by going into Notepad and watching what letters pop up when you wiggle the stick or press a button.

This is the best combo joystick I've seen, not just because it lets you play everything from MAME Pac-Man on your PC to the latest Mortal Kombat on your PS2, but because the people who made it obviously know and care a lot about gaming.

If you're a hardcore nostalgia gamer or live for fighters, this is the stick for you.

X-Gaming [Official Site]

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