Street Fighter IV

Looks like I've got a bit of catching up to do after the nice 12 hours at work today. As some of you may know the rumour is (and apparently confirmed) that Commodore 64 games are coming to the WiiShop Channel. More useless stuff for you to spend your spare Wii points on. I will however be doing a list of the ten C64 games I want to see on the Wii Channel by the end of the year. Thanks to work don't expect the list until Thrusday afternoon.

But on to the main focus -- I finally caved and put the money down for Street Fighter IV on Sunday. My original line of thinking was that I don't like playing online and if I were to play it multiplayer it would be over at any number of friend's houses that are already getting the game and are "tourney-fags" so no matter how many hours of practice I put in they'll probably still kill me.

But the thing that was stopping me was the fact that they're selling a product that really can't be enjoyed out of the box for the $60 you spend. Now I know yes, there are people that will get it and be happy with the game but the only way to play Street Fighter (or any game in the fighting genre) is with an arcade stick, which doesn't come cheap as the tournament edition stick runs about $150 at retail and good luck finding that now. There's another stick for about $70 and then there's the 'fight pad' that still gives you the blister enducing d-pad but at least you get a 6-button layout. That runs about $40.

I'm not trying to be a smug elitest for the genre but honestly you can't play a fighting game on the 360 controller or even on the PS3 sixaxis (although its slightly less horrid.) So at the very least you're spending around $90-100 to enjoy the game at its fullest. That's my problem. But I reasoned if I spent close to double that on something like Guitar Hero or *sigh* Wii Fit, then why am I whining about a game, that at its fullest, I'll actually enjoy.

I got the fight pad but I assume I'll quickly upgrade to a stick if I find one. I also got the game for the 360. I'm trying to figure out if I did so out of habit or are acheivements really that big of a selling point for me.

So seeing as everyone is picking this up tomorrow, are you going to deal with the regular controllers or did you splurge and pick up one of the sticks?