5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
There has to be something better out there...
Date of Review: Aug 20, 2000
With my Gravis GamePad Pro braking down earlier this year, I found myself looking for another gamepad to play my games on. I went to CompUSA and looked over the selection of controllers they offered. They had some high end controllers in the range of $60, but that was more than I was looking to pay, and the controllers had more features than I really needed. I was just looking for a standard controller.
My options were pretty limited. My choices were a generic controller that cost $4.99, but the feel of it didn't just seem right. I could have opted for getting the GamePad Pro again, but I was never completely happy with it. I saw that Logitech had a controller that felt good and seemed to be of the basic nature that I need. I soon found myself on my way home with it.
The Thunderpad Digital is much like the old Super Nintendo control pad. There is a direction pad on the left for going up/down/left/right. There are four buttons to the right of the pad, in a square pattern, with two smaller buttons position in the middle ( kind of like the start and select buttons ). There's always two buttons at the top ( manual calls them firing buttons ) that you can press down with your index fingers.
The controller comes with some software for programming the gamepad. Nothing to fancy hear, just a menu screen to adjust the buttons according to the game you're playing. There are some pre-designed configurations for games like Quake and Duke Nukem. But I will have to confess that I never attempted playing with these configurations because they weren't the type of games I was playing.
I need to say that I had a lot of problems getting this controller to work perfectly. Most likely, you're going to have to go to logitech's web site (www.logitech.com) to get an update patch for the gamepad which gives you more options to play with.
I've only tried to get this controller to work on three games -- Xwing v TieFighter, Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy 8. I had mild success on XvT, but I could never get the controller to work on the Final Fantasies. I did everything possible to ensure that the gamepad was calibrated, but every time I went to the game my cursor was jumping all over the place. It was so out of control that I could barely select from New Game, Continue, and Quit on FF8's menu screen.
I'll say that these problems could be with the games I had, though all the games had the latest drivers and patches downloaded. the problem I was experiencing was definitely with the calibration. I calibrated it over and over again, but every time I got started on one of the games, everything went down the tubes. I wouldn't recommend this pad because there has to be something out there that is easier to use. My old Gravis Gamepad Pro wasn't this bad, and that's the one that I'm thinking of going back to.
Nice shape and design and everything. But be cautious that you might have problems like I did getting it calibrated. I spent close to two hours trying to get it to work with my games. If you do get it, I wish you better luck than I had.
