With the advent of the recent posting of a review of the X-Arcade joystick to www.xbox-scene.com, I feel the
need to reiterate my own experience with the joystick and the company which sells it.
Several months ago, my brother and I paid for two X-Arcade units (the dual-joystick variety, because there was
no alternate model available), plus, as part of a package deal, converters for all the consoles, including of
course the Xbox. The joysticks with the Xbox converters arrived. We hooked one up and immediately fired up
Samurai Shodown 2 under MameX.
Immediately, I noticed something was wrong. I quickly identified the problem: lag. The joystick was literally
introducing noticable lag. It felt like playing Quake 3 on a laggy server, except that the lag was solid, at
what I estimated at the time to be roughly 100ms. That sort of delay between pressing "slice" on the joystick
and the character responding on-screen is sufficient to thoroughly ruin the gaming experience.
The lag is not apparent when using just a joypad, such as the "S" controller.
Not willing to panic just yet, we first hypothesized that perhaps MameX had some sort of incompatibility with
the joystick, or perhaps the modchip was somehow responsible (yes, go ahead and groan). So we acquired a non-
modded Xbox from a friend, stuck in his recently acquired Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and tried it out. As was
pessimistically expected, the results were exactly the same. Lag with the X-Arcade, no lag with a joypad, and
no lag with a cheap joystick purchased from CompUSA, although said cheap joystick was a piece of crap that
could barely handle diagonals at all. We also took this opportunity to test the other X-Arcade joystick on our
friend's Xbox, on the theory that perhaps the first X-Arcade was faulty, but the results were again identical.
It was time to email the X-Arcade people and find out what could be done about the problem. While we were at
it, since it had been about a week and we hadn't seen any sign of the rest of the converters for the joysticks,
we placed a query about those as well.
A long span of time went by with no response. More email was sent. Eventually, after I had recently taken it
upon myself to make a post to Usenet on the subject, we got a reply from the X-Arcade people. They pointedly
did not mention the conspicuously missing converters, and instead cut to the chase: They wanted to know if we
had used the X-Arcade on a modded Xbox.
What does this tell everyone? Here is what it tells me: They were looking for a convenient way out of their
mess, and figured (half-correctly) that anyone buying an X-Arcade with the Xbox converter was probably doing so
for MameX, seeing as how artwork featuring classic arcade games is plastered all over the X-Arcade boxes. How
nice and convenient for them. Unfortunately, in our case, it does not wash, because we purchased TWO X-Arcade
units, and one of them only saw very brief use on a non-modified Xbox, and yet it exhibited the same lag.
More time went by. Most of the remainder of the converters we had ordered eventually did arrive, some two and
a half months late. Not all of them. We finally took the time to videotape footage of the X-Arcade being used,
with the on-screen game displayed in the background, along with the same deal with a regular joypad (mostly just
the player pressing one button at a time in a shoot-em-up game), and analyzed the footage frame-by-frame on the
PC. As near as we can figure, the lag introduced by the X-Arcade, vs. a joypad, is closer to 150ms.
The X-Arcade seems to utilize a serial cable (and associated internal hardware) for interfacing with its various
compatible gaming platforms. It may not be common knowledge, but a serial interface is, in fact, a poor choice
if you want a tight response from whatever the platform is interfacing with. My brother and I suspect that this
choice of interface is the primary culprit behind the lag being introduced.
In closing, I must state the obvious: In its current incarnation, the X-Arcade is not worth ten bucks, unless
the player is of sufficiently poor competence that they don't even notice having such a dramatic reduction in
their effective reflex time. Owners of the X-Arcade, try this: Load up Gradius III under xSNES, start a game,
and as soon as it begins, just wiggle the ship left and right. It will look and feel as though the ship is on
a short spring. This is because of the lag. You are wiggling it back and forth faster than the lag itself
(0.15 seconds) so the response of the ship is like a shadow of your input. Try it again with a joypad and see
if it still happens. Go ahead, switch between one and the other to be sure. You are not hallucinating.
Shoot-em-up games are probably the best sort of game to test the response time of any controller. Fighter
games are not so ideal, but anyone who has already mastered a given fighter will surely notice when the
gameplay suddenly feels a bit like molasses. I know I did. I consider it a personal mission to inform
potential buyers about this product, and secondarily about X-Arcade's customer support and, indeed, their
reliability as to fulfilling orders in a timely fashion.
I do not make any recommendations for alternatives for the X-Arcade because, frankly, there seems not to BE any
adequate alternatives, or else I haven't been looking hard enough. My search continues.
Author
Topic: X-arcade Review - Warning! (slightly On-topic) (Read 369 times)