Venom Arcade Stick Review
Ask any fighting game aficionado what their earliest memories of the genre are, and many will reminisce of hours lost in an arcade, pounding coin after coin into the slot of something like Street Fighter II or Tekken, slapping buttons and wiggling sticks for that perfect hadouken input.
Rock up to any fighting tournament and you'll very swiftly notice that an exceptional few competitors are holding a standard controller. At the least, any serious competitor will be clinging onto a specially designed fight pad, but most will be clutching their favourite fight stick under their arms.
The humble fight stick seeks to emulate the original arcade cabinet layout, replacing portability and seeming comfort with simplistic design and ease of use. I say 'seeming' comfort as, I assure you any fighting fan will agree, sitting long enough pounding buttons in a claw grip is a sure-fire way to RSI or carpal tunnel. The humble fight stick reigns supreme.
So, if you want to take fighting games seriously, you'll need a fight stick. It seems that simple. However, look around and I'm sure you'll notice an absolute dearth of next-gen compatible fight sticks around.
Enter Venom and their 'Arcade Stick for use with PS3/PS4'. Retailing at around £70, the Arcade Stick slides in at the “much cheaper” end of the spectrum (many other fight sticks coming in at around £180 or higher) so players could be forgiven for assuming that the Venom Arcade Stick is a low quality alternative. That would be an incorrect assumption.
On opening the box, the Arcade Stick's simplistic and ergonomic design is apparent. It's a weighty beast, with moulded sides, and a metal bottom, and sports a standard eight face buttons (the four PlayStation face buttons, and the shoulder buttons) in a curved layout (some claim this is for ease of thumb-rest, though most tournament fighters I know refuse to use their thumbs at all), and a good solid eight directional stick.
The buttons have that typical Japanese Arcade cabinet look and feel, but are a little softer and quieter than the traditional Japanese Sanwa buttons. They feel almost as sensitive but lack the signature click that some gamers may be familiar with. It's not exactly game changing, but worth noting. The stick, however, is a joy to use. I know that it isn't a Sagwa or Seimitsu, but it may as well be, as it has a very similar feel in regards to its tension and deflection, resulting in a loose and very accurate stick.
The Arcade Stick also has a few other features that made me intensely joyous to see. Firstly, the device allows you to swap between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 modes (I tested it on both consoles and found no difference in how it ran) and also features the ability to swap the stick input to Left Analogue Stick mode or Directional Pad Mode depending on what the game requires.
Most excitingly, alongside the Start/Options, Select and Share Buttons is a Turbo Button. As I gazed at this I wondered, briefly, how many gamers these days actually even know what a Turbo button does, let alone have actually seen or used one. It's not something that is of much use in general gaming these days, but it made me overjoyed to see such a wonderful addition that could so easily have been skipped over – who would have noticed?!
After a few rounds a piece on Ultra Street Fighter IV (post patch), Mortal Kombat X, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, and Injustice: Gods Among Us, the stick holds up exceptionally well. Taking it for a spin in USF4's Training Mode (with full input and fight stats on) showcases just how accurate the stick is (it's surprisingly simple to get a perfect diagonal) and how light the buttons actually are to use. I even took it for a few rounds in 'Titan Attacks' (a little indie Space Invaders style game) and Pix the Cat (another indie arcade game not dissimilar from Pac-Man), and it worked wonderfully in both those cases also.
All in all, the Venom Arcade Stick may be less than half the price of it's competitors, but it's a sturdy, hard-wearing and option laden piece of equipment that will doubtless be a solid feature at many fighting tournaments across the world. If you're looking to take this years fighting games a little more seriously, or even if you're just after experiencing them in the very best light, the Venom Arcade Stick is a solid choice.