Speedlink goes gold for Competition Pro silver jubilee
Blaster from the past
Speedlink is celebrating 25 years of joystick jubilation, with the release of a limited edition gold Competition Pro - the ultimate home arcade accessory.
Those of you who owned a Commodore 64 or Amiga, will look back upon your first Competition Pro with nostalgic exhilaration.
Now on its silver anniversary, a quarter of a century since it was launched, Speedlink presents the Competition Pro 25th Anniversary Edition.
Pushing all the right buttons
Limited to 10,000 units, each joystick comes with a unique serial number and certificate. While it'll connect to your Windows PC through USB, it upholds the classic features such as micro-switches with memorable clicking sounds, as well as the manic machine gunner's favourite: a continuous fire button.
The joystick also comes with a CD of 50 original games from the golden era of home computing, including Turrican from the C64 and Arkanoid from the Amiga.
Many of us that craved the grail of gaming success - to gloat at the towering face of Sir Patrick Moore and win the golden joystick on 1990s TV show Gamesmaster - will be itching in anticipation.
The Speedlink Competition Pro 25th Anniversary Edition is available from March, although there's no word on pricing just yet. ®
COMMENTS
Not as good as it looks
I bought the non-gold painted version a while back, for playing emulated C64 and Arcade games, and though it has the look and feel of the original joystick, the version I've got has a fundamental flaw - it doesn't handle quick responses well at all.
It's ok for general use, but if you play any game that uses rapid joystick waggling or rotation (and many C64 games used this, as the sticks back then only supported one button) it often won't register the movements, and I believe this is down to the USB controller used.
Wizball on the C64 is a prime example - it's very difficult to reliably activate the pickups with this stick. Maybe they've fixed it for the new version. Let's hope.
Kempston!
Classic Kempston joysticks had steel shafts, not the cruddy plastic of a Quickshot.
Although Kempstons wern't any good for flight sims, having no triggers nor top buttons...
Errr...
When I got my kempston joystick interface it came with a competitioin pro...
So what do you mean "kempston tat"?
Bah
Wake me up when WICO makes a new ErgoStick. Now that was a true wonder of a device.
