Mad Catz Street Fighter IV FightSticks are awesome

We just met with Mad Catz's Alex Verrey here in our San Francisco offices to get hands-on with the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV product line-up and to find out what makes them special.

First off, forget everything that you might remember about the cheap Mad Catz accessories from the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube days. All of Mad Catz's new Street Fighter IV controllers have tremendous build quality and feel terrific in hand. The company worked with Capcom and expert players to make sure that the sticks meet the standards of serious Street Fighter enthusiasts. Mad Catz also had to get the approval of Capcom Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono on aesthetics and controls, and he wasn't afraid to send the joysticks back for more work if the button layout wasn't correct or if the controls didn't feel right.

Playing with the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition is as close to the arcade experience as you're going to get. The stick uses the exact same Sanwa joystick and buttons found in the actual Street Fighter IV arcade cabinets in Japan. You used to have to build your own stick or get someone in a fighting game forum to make one for you if you wanted a controller that used genuine arcade parts. The FightStick is also very easy to mod in case you wanted to change out the artwork or even swap in an American-style joystick and convex buttons.

Experienced players will appreciate several features on the stick. The designers placed the start and select buttons on the front part of the box well out of the way of the joystick and buttons to prevent any inadvertent mid-game pauses. The controller also has a lock switch that disables the turbo and, depending on platform, the Xbox Guide or PlayStation Home buttons. A lot of players like to bring their sticks with them when visiting friends or traveling to competitions so the Tournament Edition stick has a small compartment for cable storage.

The Tournament Edition stick will be available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the US on Feb. 17 for $149. The sticks aren't cross-console compatible but they will both work with the PC. Pre-orders have already sold out for the initial 3,000 unit launch allocation, but another shipment will arrive in late February according to Alex.

Mad Catz will also ship a regular Street Fighter IV Arcade FightStick for players looking for a more affordable joystick. The standard stick is smaller than the Tournament Edition and doesn't feature Sanwa hardware, but the joystick and buttons still feel great and you can't argue with the price. The PS3 version will retail for $69 and the Xbox 360 will sell for slightly more, $79, due to higher console licensing fees. The standard stick is as easy to mod as the Tournament Edition, so modders might want to pick up this model as a starter kit.

Ricardo sat down with Capcom's Seth Killian at CES last week to find out about the new Street Fighter IV sticks Mad Catz put together with the help of Capcom. Check out the video in case you missed it.