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After 4 months since the arrival of Street Fighter 4, Play-Asia finally has Madcatz products in stock along with some arcade joysticks from Hori.

At the time of this post, the products posted below are available in stock. If you haven’t pick up any arcade joysticks, here’s your chance to do so now.

Xbox 360

Hori Blazblue Fighting Stick

Hori Fighting Stick EX 2

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightStick

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightPad Ken Edition

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightPad Blanka Edition

Playstation 3

Hori Blazblue Fighting Stick

Hori Real Arcade Pro Stick 3

Hori Fighting Stick 3

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightStick

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightPad Ryu Edition

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightPad Chun Li Edition

Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightPad Ken Edition

Other Playstation 3 arcade joysticks that might interest you (cheaper than Madcatz or Hori)

Mayflash Universal Fighting Stick, Saulabi 4k Arcade Joystick, R4 Ready4 Fighting Stick

• Great mixture of 2D and 3D Graphics.
• Awesome music.
• Combat system a bit complex, satisfying however once you manage to pull them off.
• Astral Finishes will leave your opponents devastated.

I have been using the Ear Force X1 for a while now and I have to say, this is THE ideal headset for night crawlers such as myself. This is a must have for Xbox 360 gamers if you fit the following pre-requisites …

• You are in the market for a good and decent quality headphones (not ultra high end ones)
• Most of your gaming sessions are at night
• and you have parents, sisters, brothers, neighbours that will come chasing you with a <insert scary weapon> the moment you blast your 7.1 surround sound speakers.

The key feature of X1 is that it combines both Xbox live chat and in-game sounds under one headset. Which means you can game at night without disturbing others and at the same time trash talk with your mates.

However you might be wondering “What if the in-game sound drowns out the chat and I’m too blur/busy/lazy/ to change the sound settings every time”. This is where the next key feature comes in. The X1 is equipped with separate volume controls. You can increase or decrease the in-game volume without affecting the chat volume and vice versa.

The X1 comes with everything you need out of the box. An audio splitter, A USB extension cable, the Xbox 360 Mic adapter and of course the headphone. The USB extension cable was a great welcome as I was worried the one on the headphone was too short to be connected to my Xbox. Just to let you know the X1 needs to draw power from (any) USB ports in order for it to work.

Sound quality wise, the X1 gets no complain from me. The bass is great for games like Gears of War 2 and the voice chat works really well. I have no trouble communicating with Neko during our many Street Fighter IV sessions.

The only downsides I can see is, the X1 cables are very long which could get pretty messy and the headset gets uncomfortable after long hours of gaming. If you got the cash, you might to consider the X3 or X4 which uses wireless technology. For me, the X1 does it job well.

TurtleBeach headsets are rare to find in Asia countries, so if you are looking to pick one up, try finding in Amazon.

These guys have been around since the launch of Street Fighter IV but us folks in Asia were having an impossible time grabbing one. Even the reliable Play-Asia has met its match when it comes to getting stocks for the FightPads & FightSticks. I pre-ordered one since January and come early May with nothing to show

I was getting fed-up of waiting and decided “Oh screw it, let me just grab one from E-Bay”. After two weeks of waiting, it finally arrived last Friday.

So what was my first impression? It felt cheap, in terms of its build. The best word to put it would be light or fragile. Perhaps it has been a long while since I held onto a “Saturn” controller, without the weight of batteries.

That aside, how does it perform for Street Fighter IV? Thankfully it has the best overall performance compared to Microsoft and other 3rd party controllers. Note that I said “best overall”. The FightPad is of course not without its issues. While the d-pad works great when performing special or ultra moves, it has some problems registering diagonal movements. Instead of jumping forward or backwards, your character will just jump in place. Emphasizing on the “cheap” build, the d-pad doesn’t feel that solid. With complains about the d-pad giving way after a few weeks, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Let’s see what else … buttons no complains, 6 face and 2 trigger buttons work great, turbo function and mic port could definitely use some extra work. Using my Earforce X1, I could hear Neko clearly but apparently my voice seem muffled to him. Problem solved by using the original Microsoft controller for voice chat.

Conclusion? Only get it if you wish to move on to the next level in fighting games (heck, having 6 face buttons and a working d-pad is definitely a level higher than MS controllers). I will do another post a couple of weeks from now to show how the Fightpad is holding up.

Other controllers you might want to check out : Cyborg Rumble Pad, Hori Pad EX Turbo

After God knows how long, I finally made a new banner, featuring the upcoming versus game Blazblue by Arc System Works (Guilty Gear).