A ways back MarkMan posted a story about how the Mad Catz Tournament Edition FightStick came to be, which he recently referenced again.This particular project first started early in 2008. Mad Catz senior product manager Chris Carroll approached me with his vision and desire to create a high quality gaming controller for Street Fighter IV. I was in awe at how passionate and ambitious he was towards the license. You could really tell that he was an old school fan of the Street Fighter series and our talks/discussions continued as we shared stories about gaming and mostly Street Fighter… The good old days.
In turn, I shared my extensive knowledge about arcade sticks and the fighting game community, and helped form the blueprint of what we wanted the product to be like. After more and more meetings and discussions, I suddenly found myself on board with the project and things started moving fast. Working with Chris and Mad Catz Industrial Designer, Lawrence Yeung, we set off to take on the market and do justice to the Street Fighter brand. X-Arcade, Pelican, Nubytech, and even Hori… Our aim was to beat them all.
I do remember a time when I was younger, amongst my friends Mad Catz was almost a running joke because of the low quality of their products. Everything we ever bought from them would have some kind of problem or just stop functioning altogether. My Mad Catz GameCube controller broke within a year while my WaveBird which I've had since they came out is STILL working 100%. I'm kinda happy to see that nowadays, they've put out a product that really has few equals in quality and none in popularity. Whenever someone is asking for advice on buying a stick, the answer I always see is "just get a TE."
I was impressed when I first saw a TE in a tourney. I was like "Madcatz who? Never heard of it." Before that I never imagined any manufactor other than Hori that would make quality sticks like that. (SE is still a piece of crap though)
I'm glad to where I live because a Hori VLX costs less than 2x TE sticks here and I'm happy with it :> It's not that VLX are really cheap here it's just because TE is overpriced.
I was surprised when I saw the TE from MadCatz and how well it was built. I like everyone else remember MadCatz for their horrid peripherals for consoles.
#4: Actually. I had an SE and it was pretty alright for a little while.. Until the buttons got stuck, hahah. That's when I modded mine, art, stick, buttons and all. Now it's at the quality of a TE stick minus the weight and space. Saved me about 50 - $60 in buying a TE.
Mind you madcatz is still a joke outside of the TE (and/or modded SE) sticks .... but yeah it's a massive and refreshing reversal .
Hell , and i say that with still a preference to Hori , they even forced hori's hand , and made them drop the old Sega's astro city layout , for a Vewlix clone
@#4 Hori's VLX is the one overpriced, if you ask me. AFAIK both have the exact same parts and the same button layout (except TE start button placement is better IMO) not to mention the VLX is clunkier. I don't know how easy to mod a VLX is but TEs are pretty easy to mod. In the end, they're fundamentally the same stick, so I don't see why one of them should cost twice as much as the other.
High quality stick, cheapest part of old ones at least was the cord storage door...breaks too easy but not a big deal.
@#8 They are not the same, maybe they have almost identical layouts but that's just because they are both top-tier sticks :> It feels complete different when you are playing on a TE/Hori VLX. TE is too quiet for me and a brand new one costs 200 USD in my country (A fully modded RAP costs less than 120 USD here btw) when I could pick up a Hori VLX for 350 USD and never look back.
to me yoshinori ono and markman,without them,no evo no hype,nothing.
its like the revival of arcade again...sweet memories