Competition Pro Remake Joystick

Well, I was surfing the net and came across what looked like the original, my favorite Competition Pro joystick. Of all joysticks, the C-Pro was the winner, the only one that survived and the only one I would deem as accurate as possible. So I spotted the sucker on amazon-uk but the bastiges wouldn't let me order one! WtF?! it's not like it's some region restricted thing like a Dr. Who dvd! So what's a geek to do? Ebay of course. It turns out there's a USA version, but it ain't red and black. No, it has to be funkodellic see-thru blue with bling-bling chrome plated stick and buttons. So how does the sucker stack up? I plugged it in and went straight for Atari800Plus 4.0. Critique as follows:

1 - The joystick has a total affirmitive action feel to it. We're talking major resistance compared to my original joysticks. This may stand up better to abuse, but has a totally different feel because of the amount of effort needed to move it. After a few minutes of some serious gear jamming in Great American Cross Country Road Race, I noticed that bling-coating on the joystick is inferior to the original rough plastic when your hand starts to sweat. Perhaps they think the bling is gonna sell more sticks in the USA, but it detracts from what looked like a good review..

2 - Buttons. The original two main buttons now have a click to them. This was not true of my originals. Again, some more force is required to activate them and in a rapid-click scenario like push-to-pump in the road race, it seemed to take a lot more physical exertion to push the car down the highway. And speaking of buttons, there are two more, and they are in a really stupid position. Maybe not stupid for newbies, but to a C-Pro veteran like myself, the extra 2 buttons prove more annoying than useful. Sadly, the left lower button puts the emulator into turbo mode. Try drivin a car at a 1500% speed boost, or trying to dodge punches/kicks from yamo while in bruce lee. Put simply, one push of that button and you're a dead man! And of course the force needed to push the new buttons is WAY less than the primary buttons.

3 - Another pet-peeve, the joystick handle actually spins freely. The original c-pro would resist you from doing this. This can attribute some drift, leaving you with unexpected diagonal move reliability. For most games this doesn't matter, but for games like Bruce Lee, a diagonal jump can mean the difference between life and death.

4 - Performance. With the emulator and USB action, I would NOT consider the setup on a pretty fast 2000+ MHz Sempron to come anywhere NEAR the speed of the real-deal Atari. There was some latency and I could surely notice it when trying to weave in and out of cars on the highway at 150+MPH.

So overall I would rate this sucker a 3 outta 5 stars. Perhaps it would make it to 4 stars if it was red and black like the euro version. Is it worth getting? Hellyeah. It's probably the closest you will come to feeling the real Atari feel while gaming on the emulator with off-the-shelf modern stuff. Now, if anybody knows how to remove the bling coating, let me know!

-Kevin