Arcade Controller - in The Home

In The Home

Prior to the 2000s, it was generally accepted that most home consoles were not powerful enough to accurately replicate arcade games (such games are known as being "arcade-perfect"). As such, there was correspondingly little effort to bring arcade-quality controls into the home. Though many imitation arcade controllers were produced for various consoles and the PC, most were designed for affordability and few were able to deliver the responsiveness or feel of a genuine arcade setup.

Nevertheless, as early as 1990, SNK released the home version of its arcade Neo-Geo MVS system, called the Neo-Geo AES, which featured the exact (except for coin-op configuration possibilities unavailable on home console) same games on the AES (home console) as on the MVS (arcade system). SNK only made one type of arcade stick and no gamepad for this console. SNK's AES sturdy joystick was considered by many as the best arcade stick ever to be found on a 2D console at the time. The company Exar recently offered a revised reissue with extra buttons called "Neo Geo Stick 2" (as well as "2+" and "3" versions) for the PS&PS2 in Japan in 2005, for Wii in 2008, PS3 in 2009 and the "Neo Geo Pad USB" in 2010.

In the 2000s, especially outside Japan, arcade attendance decreased as more gamers migrated to increasingly powerful home consoles. In 1994, the Neo-Geo CD was the first CD console to translate arcade games on home systems in an upgraded version, the soundtracks being rendered in CD quality, the games besides this were similar to AES/MVS versions. It was available with a new D-pad arcade stick hybrid, and was compatible with the older AES arcade sticks as well. Although the Neo-Geo CD was able only to offer 2D games, in 1998, the Dreamcast was the first console to deliver at once 3D games and near-perfect arcade translations, thanks mostly to the similarity in hardware between it and Sega's NAOMI arcade system. Interest in bringing home the arcade experience grew steadily throughout the decade, with fighting game enthusiasts building their own controllers using parts from arcade manufacturers such as Sanwa Denshi, Happ, and Seimitsu. At the same time, the PC became increasingly competent as an arcade emulator with software such as MAME, and enthusiasts have built entire faux arcade cabinets to bring the total experience home.

Towards the end of the decade, the popularity of the game Street Fighter IV was credited for reviving interest in playing fighting games at the arcade, and for stimulating demand for arcade-quality controllers when the game was ported to home consoles. In a licensing deal for the home version of SF IV, Mad Catz produced the Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition, the first commercially available console stick in North America to include genuine (Sanwa) arcade parts. They also released a lower-cost version of the controller with Mad Catz's own imitation parts, but designed the housing so that the parts could easily be replaced, for those who wanted to upgrade later. This in turn generated more publicity for modding and building custom sticks.