Initially I was wary about the knock-offs, understandably, but from further reading online I discovered that these knock-offs where found to usually be either equal or better than the original pads. I was sold. They where cheap so why not. I bought them and, surprisingly, a week later they arrived in the post from China (we really do live in a global village). I immediately plugged them into my PS3, powered it up and they just worked. I loaded into Street Fighter IV and instantly they just felt better. The D-Pad is just more fluid to use than the stock Xbox 360 or PS3 controller. The D-Pad on the Xbox 360 has to be the worst I’ve ever used, it’s like a hairy wart on an otherwise excellent controller. I had hoped to use my Xbox 360 pads for ROM’s, but even something like Super Mario Bros is a pain when being played with the 360 controller. The PS3 has a better D-Pad, in fact you can play SFIV pretty well with it, but I found I hit a ceiling pretty fast in how far I could go with it. The lack of 6 face buttons and the feel of the D-Pad made it awkward to pull off more complicated combos and focus breaks.

Overall, the design of this pad is geared towards simplicity. It’s wired and super light, it also has 6 face buttons, needed for fight games in my opinion, especially in Street Fighter with its low, medium and high strength kicks and punches. It also has 2 shoulder buttons, tapered out to make them feel comfortable to rest your index fingers on. But what really separates this pad from the rest is the fantastic D-Pad, as far as I was able to find out, even though it’s floating (i.e. 1 whole piece sitting above the controller) underneath each direction has a separate button. It makes pulling of movements and combos a lot easier. Immediately I was able to get back to the same level as I was with the PS3 controller and started to improve. I can now pull off Akumas air fireballs with ease, and hurricane kicks and hadokens are second nature now. As for ROM’s, well I’ve been playing through Super Mario Bros and its finally a joy again.

It’s amazing how something as simple as a good D-Pad has been consistantly designed wrong or overlooked in the last few generations of game controllers. If you are looking to get into fighting games but don’t fancy a stick or are looking for something to use to dust off that old ROM collection then I can’t recommend these controllers enough. Just do a search on ebay for them.

**UPDATE** The D-Pad on both of these controllers have since broken. From doing some research I’ve found that they are not counterfeits, however they are defective original Sega Saturn Pads. In Japan, the pads I have where the first version, but it was found that the plastic that was used for the D-Pad was prone to breaking, due to its design and also the plastic used. In the second revision, the D-Pad was redesigned and they used a much more durable Nylon plastic for it. Visually the only way to tell the difference between the revisions is that the newer ones are gray with some blue buttons. If you are considering getting these, make sure you purchase the gray colored ones.

More info here: Saturn Digital gamepad