The MadCatz Arcade Gamestick is a solid peripheral whose high price is offset by its freebies.

Well known 3rd-party peripheral maker MadCatz has long since made their way unto the Xbox 360 with such products as: corded controllers, the MC2 Racing Wheel, component cables, faceplates, charging stands, etc… Now, with the release of the Xbox 360 Arcade Gamestick, they’ve expanded their product line yet again.

The first thing you’ll notice, (and probably dislike), about the Arcade Gamestick is that it is corded, just like all of MadCatz’ other 360 controllers. Even though this controller is an “officially licensed product,” speculation and rumor have it that good ole MS isn’t releasing their proprietary wireless codec to 3rd-party peripheral makers. Now, I can understand this stance from a business standpoint, but from a gamer’s perspective this will probably mean that other peripherals that should be wireless, like the Xplorer controller for the upcoming Guitar Hero 2, won’t be.

That’s unfortunate and may drive people away from buying the game based on that fact alone. Yet that’s how the situation looks right now, and we’ll see what it looks like down the road when that game releases. On the bright side, the Arcade Gamestick doesn’t have any batteries to be replaced or recharged, and besides, being corded isn’t too bad, especially since MadCatz have provided us with a 10 foot cord with a break away attachment to keep you from pulling your 360 if you yank the controller too hard. This feature was standard on all original Xbox controllers, and was certainly useful back then as well.

Now, onto the brighter news. For those of you that would say that there are not enough games to justify the purchase of a special joystick controller, keep your comments at bay. The MadCatz Arcade Gamestick has all of the buttons you’d expect on a normal 360 controller, plus more. You’ll get: a head set jack; right thumb stick; a d-pad; a left thumbstick (which in this case happens to be a full size joystick with a button on top); the X, A, B, Y, Back, Start, and Guide buttons; L button; L trigger; R button; and R trigger. The right thumbstick can be clicked down as you’d expect, and the full size joystick can also be clicked down. Additionally, the controller has a spinner control for perhaps the future release of retro games that utilized that feature on an arcade machine in the past. There is also a turbo button that can be programmed for use with almost all of the controller’s buttons, at 1 of 3 speeds that correspond to the number of button presses per second.