I was "FINNALY" able to pick up a Hori arcade stick for the 360 the other day.

I missed out on the Dead or Alive 4 version that was released before I got a 360, and I was not about to spend more than retail for one. So I waited for this baby to hit. Technically it's the Virtua Fighter 5 version, but thankfully it only came with stickers as proof as such. I will be keeping mine devoid of any such items however and it will remain nice and clean.

I'm looking forward to getting some DoA4 practice with it as well as the slew of arcade games I need to test it out on.

I really, really like arcade sticks. I bought two of the Agetec sticks on the Dreamcast because of all the lovely 2D fighters on that system.

(x2--the other one is gutted in preparation for a possible upgrade to Sanwa Denshi innards.)

I got the Virtua Stick on the Saturn solely for Virtua Fighter 2.

Honestly, I don't remember playing much else with it on that poor system.

And who could forget the NES Advantage stick? Countless hours were spent on this bad boy shootin' up aliens in Contra or taking down Shredder.

Notice the turbo knobs position--play your games right people! (yeah right)

And it's "Super" version. If I was playing Street Fighter II or any of it's variants at home, I was using the good ol' Super Advantage.

The Most useful upgrade on this piece of hardware was the "Slow" button, which logically just repeatedly paused the game for you. Best used on Turtles in Time or any Konami game with that phenomenal pause melody.

Unfortunately I didn't ever get into fighters or any game on the PS2 to warrant an arcade stick purchase. This was mainly do to me getting the system so late in it's life cycle.

The next stick on agenda is the Hori Fighting Stick for the Wii as I just learned that it is interchangeable with the Cla ssic (censored!) Controller. I figure I will fall in love with that when Brawl is released; not to mention the Virtual Console fun that could be had.

Now I just wish I was actually decent at the types of games that are best played with sticks. I think I'll work on that right now...