In Street Fighter the shoulder buttons serve as a combination of all three punches or all three kicks for activating ultras, but in different games they might have a different function. The fightstick features six face buttons and two shoulder buttons in the now traditional layout, and in most fighting games this amounts to the top three buttons being Heavy, Medium and Light kick while the bottom three are the same for punch. This makes sure the pad is compatible with a wide range of non-fighting games, including 2D classics on Game Room and Xbox Live Arcade.

Like the FightSticks from the same range, the function of the D-Pad can be edited to be the Left or Right analogue stick or the D-Pad itself, allowing you to choose just in case the game you want to use it for uses the stick for menus and the D-Pad for gameplay. The fact Mad Catz have quite deliberately made the D-Pad oversized was clearly a very wise decision, as your thumb can then slip about the pad easily and in more exaggerated movements, making many moves that are sometimes difficult easier to use.

The D-Pad actually seems to function in style closer to an actual fighting stick than a regular D-Pad, adn this works well, as sticks have always been the best for fighters.

The pad sports an eight-way floating D-Pad that is nice and mushy, offering a smooth movement that’s the polar opposite of the stiff D-Pads on the official controllers.

They’ll look familiar in shape to Sega Saturn fans, resembling that pad that is so revered by fighting game fans very closely. Compared to the arcade sticks which’ll set you back three figures digits, the FightPads will only set you back around 40 dollars (or 35 pounds, exchange rate be damned) a piece.

Mad catz pc game pad