The Craving...

Long time no blog, folks. Hopefully in a couple of days when I have the house all to myself, I'll be posting a lot more.

Anyway! First things first... I wanted to let you all know that I picked up the two Kinect Sports games for the Xbox 360, and that I've been having a ball with bowling in particular. It's my favorite of the motion-controlled versions of the sport, because it just feels more like the real thing than the simulations in Wii Sports and Sports Champions 2. The dynamic camera angles (behind the ball! Next to the pins!) and the celebratory music after a strike brings a lot of excitement to a game not usually known for its heart-pounding thrills. The only issue I have is that you need a lot of space to properly use the Kinect; more than I have to spare in this trailer. I could move around (a lot of heavy) furniture to give myself an extra couple of feet, but geez, do I gotta? That wasn't the kind of exercise I had in mind when I bought this thing.

So now I've turned my attention to a different peripheral; one that doesn't require so much lifting. I had a few arcade sticks back in Michigan, and I'm itching to relive that experience. Sure, an ordinary joypad is functional, but it lacks the urgency you get from tightly gripping a stick with one hand while smashing quarter-sized buttons with the other. I miss that feeling. I need it.

The only problem is that arcade sticks are expensive, and the ones I've had in the past have been varying degrees of disappointing. Ask me about the Pelican universal arcade stick which burned out the rumble technology in my Playstation 2, or the Tekken 5 joystick with the sticky square button which didn't work with Namco Museum. That's the part of the arcade stick experience I don't want to relive... the unmet expectations.

I've got an arcade stick coming in the mail which I hope will do in a pinch... the Hori Fighting Stick 3, which was given high marks by IGN but has gotten a mixed reception from dedicated fighting game fans. Maybe it'll be good enough for me. If it's not, I'll have to break out the power tools and build a stick from scratch. It's not an ideal situation, but as the old saying goes, if you want something done right...