33 out of 33 people found this review helpful.
Sidewind through Your Games
Date of Review: Mar 30, 2005
The Bottom Line: The Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad is one of the best game pads for the money on the market today!
The Microsoft Sidewinder game pad is quite possibly one of the best accessories you can get for your personal computer, especially if you are a big time PC gamer. Most game pads give you 4-6 buttons and a directional pad, but not the Sidewinder. The Sidewinder provides you with a massive 8 buttons and a directional pad that allows for easy diagonal movement.
The Sidewinder is a very comfortable game pad to use. I have larger than average hands, yet the pad fits comfortably in my hands and does not slide or slip out of them while I am playing games. The buttons are also easily accessable to my thumbs and trigger fingers. There are 2 rows of 3 buttons on the top of the controller and you also have a trigger on top of each side of the controller. These buttons can be set up to perform whichever action you need them to for almost any game you play. You can also assign keyboard functions to certain buttons to limit the complications while playing games that require both a control pad and the keyboard. The full directional pad is a nice switch from the regular game pad that most game pads feature. It allows for smooth movement, including diagonal movement.
Overall I love the Sidewinder game pad. It has given me countless hours of enjoyable game time. I use it mostly with Halo, Soldier of Fortune and my NBA Live games. The amount of buttons allows me to assign the majority of the game functions to the Sidewinder pad. I also am a bit of a classic console buff and I have most of the emulators for Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and Nintendo on my computer and I use the Sidewinder to play those as well.
The Sidewinder is simple and easy to install. It comes with an installation CD, but most of the time it is plug and play. I have used it with Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows XP and both times it has worked perfectly with the plug and play feature offered by Windows. The only problems I had were with Windows 98 and I had to use the driver installation CD to install the pad because the driver Windows tried to download from the internet did not work. I'm not sure if this was a technical problem or a problem with the software Windows downloaded.
The only other complaint I have about the Sidewinder is that it is not USB compatible. It still features the older gameport connection. This is not a problem if you have a PC that still has the old gameport on it, but a lot of newer PCs feature USB only support. Microsoft also makes a Sidewinder with a USB connection, but I have read some of the reviews on that here on this site and people tend to say that this, the older Sidewinder, works better.
This is a Microsoft product so it is very well made. I have dropped the controller on my floor several times and it has held up without any cracks or internal damage. I have had this game pad for over 2 1/2 years and the buttons still work the same way they did the first time I used the controller. Overall I am very pleased with this product! I hope you have enjoyed reading this review and if you use the Microsoft Sidewinder game pad I hope that you will be as happy with your experience as I was with mine! Thanks for reading!
