SFIV FightPad, Misc Rating Options

[E. Randy Dupre]

Just thought I'd say quickly, my Fightpad arrived today. Unwrapped it now, haven't yet plugged it in to check it out, but holding it and having a fiddle, I've got to say I'm not hugely hopeful. It feels very cheap, it looks very cheap - slippy-slidey plastic - and it's hugemungous. Not Xbox burger pad hugemungous, but nowhere near the sleek, comfortable fit of the Saturn pad that they were claiming they'd used as inspiriation for it.

Unless they werre talking about the shitty US/Euro Saturn pads.

The facia buttons are okay, the shoulders are nice, but the d-pad lacks any kind of friction and connecting it with your thumb feels like trying to grab the soap in the bath.

<insta-edit> Actually, I think one of the facia buttons is fucked. The RB appears to be depressed into the shell and it looks like I'm going to have to take a screwdriver to it already, without even having used it once.

Going to try it out and report back.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Fucking hell, it doesn't even turn on! I shit you not, the thing's buggered to such an extent that I can't even get the 360 to throw power into it.

Back it goes. As it is, it's nothing more than a useless lump of plastic

[Jakeway]

WOW.... that sounds crap. I know how you feel though, I once bought a replica SNES pad from Hong Kong and found it stopped working after a few hours.

Not keen on getting a stick then Randy? They're pretty good from Shmups as well as Beat Em Ups.

Just to be sure, do you mean these pads Randy?

[E. Randy Dupre]

Yep, that's the one Jake.

I've just been on Play - the site I bought it from - to grab their helpline number and noticed that they've sold out already. If my experience is common, that's going to mean a lot of unhappy customers.

Submitted a customer review, suggesting that Mad Catz constructed the pad from cornflakes, dandruff and twigs. I doubt it'll pass through the reviews-checking procedure, but you never know.

I've got th stick that a lot of people picked up alongside VF5 - Hori EX2? - but I'm rbbish with it. At fighters. I'm a passable stick-user when it comes to shmups, but my reactions aren't as quick as they are with a pad. Stupidly, I had high hopes for this, despite the negative comments about the build quality of the sticks - I was really looking forwards to playing SFIV with a controller that felt natural to me. *Really* looking fowards to it - the last time I was able to play SF with a pad I found comfortable was the Saturn port of Alpha 2 :S

So now I'm weighing up the options. I can either return it to Play and get a refund, or I can take it apart and see if I can fix up whatever needs fixing myself.

£35! What a rip-off.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Right, okay. The dongle along the USB cable splits apart and mine, for whatever reason, will not register unless it's pushed together as tightly as possible. Which it wasn't when I got it out of the box. I've taped it together and it's now working. Loose connection?

RB registers, but I've got to absolutely hammer down on it for it to do so. Actually, none of the buttons register reliably when you tap them, which is far from ideal, but I don't have to crash down onto them like I do the buggered RB.

The d-pad... hmm. Diagonals don't register very easily or smoothly, which isn't necessaily a fault. It may be like that on purpose, to try and rectify the most common problem with the regular 360 pad's d-pad - diagonals registering when you weren't even pressing them.

Screwdriver time, then. I can't put up with RB like it is - it feels more like a pressure-sensitive pad than a proper button, because there's no give to it at all.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Update!

Fixed it. Oh, and I got my tiny brain all confued when I was talking about the fault with the RB button: it didn't have any give to it, I said that right, but what that meant was that all you had to do was breathe on it and it'd register a heavy punch. Too sensitive, not ot sensitive enough. I'm not sure what I was banging on about upthread. Blame it on it being a Friday.

The reason for the problem with the RB is that the unit is screwed together far too tightly. And when I say tightly, I mean "holy shit, I've got no fingerprints left from trying to loosen these bloody screws" tightly. My thumbs are almost red raw.

Anyhoo. It's not just the shell that the screws are ridiculously tight on, it's also the screws connecting the circuit board to the inside front of the shell. The board's pushed that far to the front that the RB - which is on the most angled part of the shell - has nowhere to go. I'm surprised that it wasn't permanently registering as being pressed, as it goes - it was nearly there. The solution is as simple as loosening the offending screws - there are two of them on the left-hand side that need to come back a bit.

Button's still not perfect - it doesn't have the satisfying physical click of the others, presumably because it's been forced into an uncomfortable position its entire (short) life - but it's a vast improvement over how it was before.

Does seem to have been a dodgy connection that was causing the power issue. Sorted now.

Anybody else get the impression that Mad Catz have been taken by surprise by the demand for their SFIV-branded product and have allowed production quality procedures to slip in an attempt to ramp up their output?

The d-pad, I'm hoping, just needs some wearing in. It's a million times better than that of the standard 360 pad, even with the slight clunkiness with the diagonals.

Final word (until the next one): if you don't mind the possibility of having to pull the controller apart to fix a flaw that should not be present - and arguably wouldn't be, from a trusted hardware manufacturer - then it's worth picking one up. Not for full price, mind. It still looks tacky, the shell feels cheap and it's helluva hassle to get into its guts.

Can use it with the Megadrive Collection, too, for added authenticity. Only just thought about that.

This post has been edited by E. Randy Dupre: Feb 20 2009, 07:55 PM

[qazimod]

Mine arrived at the same day I was able to pick up my game preorder, and whilst it's not the best control method I could have gone for (obviously), I'd rather use something like this as a controller than be lumbered with the bog-standard 360 pad. Maybe I'm rubbish, but I have difficulty trying to play beat 'em ups whilst using the shoulder buttons, and I that's why I loved the enormous western pad for the original Xbox. Six face buttons = bliss.

Unpacked it sharpish and got playing and it took a while for it to feel at home in my hands, but it is quite comfy to hold - you don't have the sides of the back sticking out or a bloody great battery pack as with the 360 controller, and whilst some could argue that all the sticky-out bits are there to help it stay secure in your hands, I don't think the FightPad really needs that, especially since it's got a nice grippy feel on the back.

I quite like the feel of the D-Pad; I was a bit worried when I heard that it would only have a D-Pad, as I have found the D-Pad's on the Xbox and 360 controllers to be terrible, especially for rotational moves - it got to the point where I would hop to the analogue stick when I wanted to perform a fireball, and then go back to the D-Pad for it's precision. I always thought the 360 D-Pad was a bit of a rush job - flat and stiff with no real substance - whereas this one feels more three-dimensional and a little looser.

And of course the face button arrangement is what I've been waiting for ever since 3rd Strike was made backwards-compatible. Trying to play SF when attacks are mapped to the shoulders is very difficult for me, and I prefer the classic layout of the original Xbox controller - when it came to the FightPad, this was even more of a big selling point for me than the D-Pad. It's great not having to think about where your fingers are, not having to assume the annoying claw shape you get when trying to use the official 360 controller.

As far as downsides go, it took a while to get used to the shape of the thing, but I expect that's the case with any new controller - I have been lumbered with the old 360 pads since I first got the console, y'know. Also, the shiny design on the front is incredibly pretty, but it just makes me petrified about ruining it when I get my sweaty mitts around the pad. Hopefully it won't end up too manky though. On the rare occasion where I haven't been able to pull off an intended move, I've put it down to me being shit and not used to the feel of the controller yet, rather than any design flaws. For the most part, the pad is all I'd hoped for - a cheap solution to the niggling problems that keep the vanilla 360 controller from being a decent beat 'em up pad.

[SniperDave]

Anybody else get the impression that Mad Catz have been taken by surprise by the demand for their SFIV-branded product and have allowed production quality procedures to slip in an attempt to ramp up their output?

Now there's a couple of words I never expected to see in the same sentence. I don't think I've ever used a Mad Catz product that wasn't complete rubbish.

[E. Randy Dupre]

The only other Mad Catz hardwaer I've bought was the Dreamcast steering wheel that came out alongside Daytona USA 2001. I think that was Mad Catz, anyway.

Glad yours works fine, qazi. Makes it more annoying that mine doesn't, tho.

[Corrupt Rose]

Now there's a couple of words I never expected to see in the same sentence. I don't think I've ever used a Mad Catz product that wasn't complete rubbish.

Thankfully the Tournament Stick I bought (which is also awesome for Lumines), is pretty good. But I'd have been pretty pissed off if I'd spent £100 on a typical Madcatz produce.

[qazimod]

Chap on rllmuk has posted some excellent pics to illustrate differences between the MadCatz and vanilla pads:





Like I said in my impressions, the D-Pad's much less flat and this makes directional inputs more pronounced, making it easier to tell if your motions are working. There's an option in training mode to show your button inputs in realtime, and trying it with the MadCatz pad demonstrates how straightforward rotational moves - QCF, HCF, etc - are to perform.

Haven't really noticed a huge amount of differenece for better or worse with the face buttons, although the increased size is welcome and as said before the 6-button arrangement is lovely.

This post has been edited by qazimod: Feb 22 2009, 12:43 PM

[E. Randy Dupre]

I switched the Saturn on again over the weekend and it really hammered home the fact that the FightPad isn't a patch on Sega's, despite the claims being made about it before release. Ignoring the other issues I've got with it, it's also enormous in comparison. And I don't understand why, when the majority of its bulk contains nothing but fresh air.

It's probably the old Americans = fat hands thing coming into play again. The difference in size between the Saturn pad and the FightPad is, I think, roughly comparable to the difference between the Xbox S pad and the Xbox burger pad.

[TheShend]

I still use a Saturn pad via a magic-box for 3rd Strike. I shall accept no other!

[Lyrical Donut]

Didn't fancy starting a new thread so I thought I'd have a moan about Madcatz in here

The RT button on my TE stick stopped responding during a game earlier. Plugging the stick back in sorted it, but there's been another instance of it reported over on rllmuk. I'll have to have a look at SRK to see if there are any more complaints about it. So I guess it's a dodgy PCB; bloody typical really - just about the only part of the stick Madcatz are responsible for, and they still manage to skimp on it.

Not pleased!

[plopboy]

Didn't fancy starting a new thread so I thought I'd have a moan about Madcatz in here

The RT button on my TE stick stopped responding during a game earlier. Plugging the stick back in sorted it, but there's been another instance of it reported over on rllmuk. I'll have to have a look at SRK to see if there are any more complaints about it. So I guess it's a dodgy PCB; bloody typical really - just about the only part of the stick Madcatz are responsible for, and they still manage to skimp on it.

Not pleased!

This also happen to me on the first day I had it I was gutted and dreading sending it back to play.com but luckly plugging it in and out again sorted it. Since then it hasn't happened again thankfully, even though I play as Chun-Li (so the stick gets lots of abuse) so hopefully it was just one of those things but worrying never the less. Shame I didn't think to get one of these http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-zl-77-...ck-70-36ak.html as all the Hori hardware I've had has been great and this stick comes with quick move reference guides.