Fight Sticks

Are fight sticks necessary? In my opinion, no, they are not. Are they better though for playing fighting games? That's subjective, but to me, they definitely are for most fighting games anyway.

I find that games where you block by holding back, a fight stick is great, such as Street Fighter. Though for games where you hold a button to block such as Mortal Kombat , a gamepad works better.

My first fight stick was for the OG Xbox generation and it was the Nubytech Street Fighter 15th Anniversary Fight Stick. It felt just like playing on an arcade machine. The base was large and had a great feel to the buttons and the bat style stick was just like I used in the arcades to play Street Fighter Alpha.

I played countless rounds of all my fighting games on that stick from Street Fighter 2 and 3, to Capcom Fighting Evolution, King of Fighters 2002, Maximum Impact, Capcom VS SNK 2, Guilty Gear Reload and other games.

Unfortunately the stick wasn't compatible with PC or the next generation of consoles. With Street Fighter 4 coming I knew I needed a new fight stick. So I preordered the Street Fighter 4 Tournament Edition Fight Stick by Madcatz. It was a great stick and I played too many online and offline rounds of Street Fighter 4 to count. It also served me well with King of Fighters and Blaz Blu as well as Persona 4 Arena.

Tekken 6 soon came out and it had a special edition which came with the game, an art book and a special edition wireless Tekken 6 themed fight stick. I bought that one and while it wasn't as high in quality as the Madcatz stick, it was , for the price a solid one. I think that the whole package was about $80 dollars. It was smaller and lighter than the Madcatz stick

Looking at prices online for these sticks, they are definitely far overpriced right now, but fortunately there are tons of options out there for fight sticks. They do take a bit of time to get used to if you haven't used one before or if you never played on an arcade machine.

I feel that a gamepad doesn't give you the precise control of directional movements that a stick gives you and the large face buttons give you easier access and control of your button presses for combos.

Luckily for me, both of those fight sticks were fully compatible with PC and lately there are lots of great fighting games out already and coming to PC. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN is the latest one and Street Fighter 5 is coming out really soon.

So what do you think? Do you prefer using a fight stick , or are gamepads better for fighting games?