CD32 Control Pad
Reviewed by Samuel Brookes

You may be thinking "Why the Hell is he doing a review on an old CD32 controller?". Well, it may be old, but I only just got mine a few days back (at the WOA99 show) and I didn`t realise how good they were - I think that they are so good I am going to write a short review on it.

As you can guess, these were originally designed to be used with Commodores failed attempt at a games console - the CD32. I am not going to talk or review the CD32 console as I don`t have one. But, over the past year or so, companies like Power Computing and Epic Marketing have started selling them separatly to be used on normal Amigas like the A1200 or as replacements for the original CD32. Before, if you wanted to use a control pad on your Amiga instead of a joystick, you could use a controller designed to be used on Amigas and Atari`s - these didn`t look too good and they were not the most comfortable thing to play games with, or you could use a Sega Master System or MegaDrive (Genesis) controller like I did. The Best one that I found, was the Sega MegaDrive controller, but I only found one game that used the extra buttons on it - Desert Strike (you could use button C to change weapons instead of pressing the SpaceBar) and it wasn`t too comfortable.

I have been wanting to buy a CD32 controller for a long time as I have a lot of CD32 games which I run through the CD32 emulator on my A1200 that came with the CD-ROM. So when I had a spare tenner at the WOA99 show I went straight over to the Power Computing stand and got one.

At first look, it looks /sort/ of like the Playstation controller - just darker, the middle is at the bottom instead of the top like the PSX and it has a few less buttons than the PSX one. But it does have the buttons at the top like the PSX and it has a set of 4 buttons on the right hand side of it - but so does the SNES one. I personly think that PSX controller was styled on the CD32 controller - or maybe it was styled on the SNES controller, who cares :). I find it more comfortable than the PSX, but not a comfortable and doesn`t look as good as the N64 controller.

The only thing that I don`t like about it is the circular direction pad. Also, it would be far more useful if more games supported it, but they are well worth the £10 they cost.

Supplier/Distributor: Power Computing and others like Epic Marketing.
Verdict: Very comfortable and should be supported by more games. If you are a serious gamer - buy one if you don`t allready have one.
Score: 90%

Samuel Brookes - ami-gerbil@ami-gerbil.freeserve.co.uk
& www.ami-gerbil.freeserve.co.uk

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