This:
or this:
I had my eye on the Hanaho hotrod for a while
http://www.hanaho.com/products/HotRodJoystick/
but it never offered a USB option, which I thought was awfully backward for such an expensive gadget-- and now the X-Arcade has trumped them in the all important price war @ $149. It can also be used with all consoles as well as PCs and Macs (via USB). Much more flexible.
Interestingly, it’s cheaper to get the bundled X-Arcade PS1/2 adapter and then pick up a dirt-cheap 2-port PS2-to-USB converter (check eBay, they go for ~$10 + shipping) than it is to spring for the “native” X-Arcade USB adapter @ $50. What are they, gouging the rich Mac users?
In a move sure to keep Andrew Bub up at night, you can even get an X-Arcade signed by the world champion of Pac-Man, Billy Mitchell:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1944755248
It took almost twenty years, but on July 3, 1999 for the first time ever, a perfect score of 3,333,360 was achieved on Pac-Man by Billy Mitchell at the Funspot Family Fun Center, Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. To achieve this, Billy had to eat every single dot, fruit and every possible blue ghost in all 256 levels of the game - a feat which took him over six hours to complete. Not only that but he didn’t lose a single life. It was the first ever perfect game of Pac-Man.
On completing the game, Billy announced “I never have to play that darn game again”. He had been playing for seventeen years. Billy Mitchell, whose “Perfect” Pac-Man game was reported by CNN, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal and TIME Magazine, spoke in a recent interview with videogames.com about how he did it:
“I understand the behavior of the ghosts and am able to manipulate the ghosts into any corner of the board I choose. This allows me to clear the screen with no patterns. This was a more difficult method for the initial 18 screens. I chose to do it this way because I wanted to demonstrate the depths of my abilities. I wanted to raise the bar higher - to a level that no one else could match.”
Um… yeah.
But then there’s the 2 player dual sticks challenge, which the SlikStick CO2 model wins hands down. Plus the spinner, the trackball. And the $600 price tag! DOH! I did find a SlikStick review here:
http://users.adelphia.net/~kevsteele/mame/slikstik.html
As he points out, it’s not as pricey as it seems at first glance… the parts themselves run $435 when purchased individually.