Designed to closely approximate the control column of the US Air Force's F-16 Fighting Falcon, the CH Fighterstick has enough programmable buttons and mini joysticks (called hats) scattered across it that you shouldn't have to take your hands from it at all. There's a trigger, three buttons, an 8-direction point-of-view HAT for your thumb, and four more 4-directional hats that you can program for whatever you want. At $149.00, it costs quite a bit for a joystick, but it's very high quality and should appeal to the hardest of the hardcore flight-sim fanatics.



Fire it up

It took a few tries to install but it wasn't that difficult. Once it showed up in the control panel's game-controller window, it slid into our games easily and responded very nicely.

The controller also has a button on the side that allows you to switch between three different sets of macros on the fly, with colored LED lights on the base to indicate which set it's currently using. This feature isn't new to the Fighterstick, but it works very well, which is new to this type of controller.

All in all, it's a really good controller for someone who loves flight sims and wants to take their game to the next level. This is a high-performance controller that's solidly designed and works very well.

Minor quibbles

We had two minor problems with it, but honestly, they're pretty small. First, there really isn't enough tension in it to make it completely realistic for the more intense flight simulations. It's great for barnstorming in a biplane or shooting down a zeppelin, but when you load up something a little more hardcore like "Falcon 4.0," some people might think it moves around a little loosely. Also, while it feels solid in your hand and is pretty stable the majority of the time, when you get really excited and yank it really hard (which isn't that uncommon in videogames), it has a tendency to tip. Optional suction cups on the bottom of the controller would go a long way toward solving this problem.

Product: Fighterstick USB
Company: CH Products
Price: $149
Available: Now
Requirements: Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP (requires Diect X 7.0a or above) for PC and MacOS 8.6 and above (requires Input Sprockets 1.7x) for Macintosh