If you ask long-time gamers what their favorite game pad (not arcade stick, just regular pads) for various 2D games was, you’ll get several different answers but the Sega Saturn’s controller will come up more than a few times. With six face buttons and a large ’floating disc’ d-pad, it was a smart design and it’s not uncommon to come across the occasional ’clonepad’ of it for modern systems. Mad Catz has done this concept before with their excellent Street Fighter IV Fightpad, and with the upcoming release of Super Street Fighter IV they have decided to reissue it with new art. Other than the new character art designs, this Fightpad is completely identical to the original... but that’s good; why change a design that had few real flaws to begin with?

The first thing you’ll notice by looking at it is that there are no analog sticks. The space they would normally occupy is instead filled by a larger, raised ’floating disc’ style d-pad, and six face buttons in a 3x2 arrangement. A switch on the back will allow the d-pad to function as either analog stick to a very limited degree, but this is mostly for navigating any menus that require it; you shouldn’t expect to play first person shooters or other such titles on this controller.

Instead, you should understand that this is a $40, USB-wired gamepad for use with two types of games: 2D fighting titles such as Street Fighter, and other ’old genre’ games that expect simple arcade or d-pad style controls; think Mega Man 10, Symphony of the Night, a fair chunk of the titles currently on the Game Room service, and so on. The Fightpad exists for the simple reason that the default Xbox 360 controller is terrible for most of these games. You can live with it if you have to, but it’s not an ideal arrangement and the d-pad on that controller was probably designed by someone who enjoys watching you suffer. So if you’re a fan of games like that, the Fightpad makes for a smart upgrade.

The Fightpad’s features are fairly basic, primarily consisting of the aforementioned large d-pad and six face buttons but also including a headset port, two shoulder buttons (serving as LB and LT), turbo-fire capability, and the usual Start/Back/Guide buttons. A switch on the back lets you set the d-pad into behaving as a very basic left or right analog stick, but it’s basically meant for instances where a game or menu demands input from that component for a brief time, rather than actually playing a game that requires analog sticks. Fightpads are built to be specialized controllers for older style games, and it does that very well.

Control quality is a huge step up from the default Xbox 360 controller if you’re playing games that rely on d-pad input, and I greatly enjoyed playing through Mega Man 10 with it. Other classics like TMNT 1989 Arcade, Symphony of the Night, and so forth were also fun and controlled well on the Fightpad, so I would probably be willing to recommend it for purchase just on that alone if those are the kind of games you’re primarily interested in.

However this Fightpad is also marketed as being useful for Super Street Fighter IV, as evidenced by the character art from that game gracing this controller. While Super SF IV isn’t available at retail at the time of writing, several similar games (regular SF IV, BlazBlue, etc.) are around and serve as good ways of testing its suitability for fighting game play. One has to understand up front that this is a $40 pad rather than a $150 arcade stick, so it’s not fair to expect the Fightpad to be as great as its sister product (the aforementioned $150 Fightstick S). The good news is that once you spend an hour or two getting used to playing on a d-pad like this, the Fightpad is actually fairly good for Street Fighter and similar games!

Generally speaking, characters with simple inputs are easy to play on the Fightpad. If you’re using someone whose primary motions are quarter-circles with the occasional simultaneous press of two buttons for EX attacks and throws/teching, this should work great for you right away. Characters with more complex inputs will require some training time however, because doing some motions on a ’disc d-pad’ like this isn’t the same as playing on an arcade stick. It took me an hour or so to be truly comfortable with E. Honda’s ’charge motion’ attacks, and the same was true of various half-circle, 360, and 720 command throws. I was able to eventually do them reliably, but it took the better part of an evening to ’re-train’ myself to do this. So while the Fightpad works great with straightforward characters like Ryu, expect to put in a little time teaching yourself the right way to do more complex motions for other characters if you intend to use them in conjunction with a Fightpad. It’s possible, you just need time to adjust.

Aside from the new Super Street Fighter IV art, this is the exact same product that Mad Catz previously released. It is still a $40 controller optimized for 2D games at the expense of being nearly useless with some other genres, and it remains a competent, comfortable ’Saturn clonepad.’ There are even some games where it may be more comfortable to use this Fightpad over the massive Fightstick S, so it has a niche it can fill. It also costs about $110 less than the Fightstick S and offers acceptable control in both fighting games and other 2D classics. If you’re understandably hesitant to spend heaps of money on a single arcade stick but still want an upgrade from the Xbox 360’s default controller as far as 2D games are concerned, then the Fightpad should suit your needs at a price that is far more friendly to your wallet.