Last month, Hori showed the tweaked US$300 plus sticks with re-modeled the grip and layout.

The sticks were designed so players could play SEGA’s Xbox LIVE Arcade game Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. Above is the latest and final redesign, which looks even closer to the Dreamcast dual sticks.

Hori, however, has once again to redesign something very important — that hefty price tag.

A Brief History Of Virtual On Twin Stick Controllers [Siliconera]

The beef? The layout was all wrong.

Hori has re-modeled the grip and layout. As game site Insert Credit points out, “The sticks are now sculpted more in-line with the Dreamcast original as well as the distance between the sticks themselves.” One thing Hori hasn’t re-modeled: That $US300 price tag.

News: HORI TwinStick re-modelling [Insert Credit]

Behold, Hori’s Real Arcade Pro EX SE. The SE stands for “Special Edition”. Why so special, when it looks just like Hori’s regular old 360 arcade stick? It’s all in the insides.

The EX SE went on sale in Japan yesterday in “limited numbers” for ¥ 13,500 (USD$151). The appeal – and the limited availability, and the price tag – comes from what the controller is made of. The stick, buttons and some of the insides are crafted from Seimitsu components, Seimitsu being a company that makes sticks and buttons for real, heavy duty Japanese arcade cabinets.

So you’re not getting a cheap, plastic imitation of an arcade stick. You’re getting an arcade stick. A heavy (2.6kg!), near-indestructible arcade stick.

For those who play Namco Bandai’s pop idol sim THE iDOLM@STER SP with pride (and in public), Japanese peripheral maker Hori has products for you!

There’s an iDOLM@STER clear case to protect your PSP-3000 from scratches, iDOLM@STER earphones and iDOLM@STER UMD cases. The entire will set you back ¥2,839 (US$32). But can you really put a price on the opportunity to rock iDOLM@STER goods in public? Apparently!

iDOLM@STER PSP Goods [Hori]

Japanese peripheral maker Hori has released a pair of Street Fighter IV joysticks for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Note that there are differences.

The Xbox 360 SFIV is a straight-up 6-button fighting stick. The PS3 SFIV stick (pictured) has an eight button lay-out — along with rapid fire that enables 20 presses-per-second.

Both will be out February 12 with the Xbox SFIV stick priced at ¥7,980 (US$89) and the PS3 one at ¥9,800 (US$110). Rapid fire doesn’t come cheap, buster.

勝つための必須アイテム!? 『ストリートファイターIV スティック』 [Dengeki]

For many gamers, this year’s Jump Festa was about more than Dragon Quest IX — it was about experiencing the Dragon Quest IX Slime DS Stand / Speaker that Hori announced last week.

Luckily, every DSi in the Square-Enix Dragon Quest IX play area was equipped with one such stand. To merely look at it is to tremble with joy. Square-Enix have been hocking the Slime in infinitely various fuzzy, fluffy, floppy forms since the late eighties, though every once in a while, they manage to surprise you. The Slime Controller, engineered and released by Hori in 2005 to commemorate the release of Dragon Quest VIII was one such surprise.

A very good friend of mine was one of the pioneers of the Slime Controller project. Square-Enix is a repeat client of Hori’s, often asking them to design and manufacture veritable gauntlets of interesting items with the most boring purposes — DS straps, DS cases, PSP straps, PSP cases, memory card stickers, et cetera. In this world, there’s no excuse for a boring thing to not at least try to be interesting. Apparently, the Slime controller was too interesting as originally conceived: it was to be jelly-filled, and soft, with the buttons themselves being the only hard plastic. The sponsors couldn’t see the reason the controller would need to actually be jelly-like, because as long as it held the shape of a Slime — as long as it looked like a Slime, people would buy it, and leave it in its box atop their TVs. The Slime Controller was manufactured as hard plastic.

Well, the Slime DS stand has arrived to say “Yes” to squishy videogame accessories. It’s simple, really. It is soft because you rest your hands on it; it has to be soft. This alone would be enough to make you want to buy it. However, it also has a speaker function. Buried in the hard plastic base is a speaker.

I couldn’t assess the sound quality of the speaker because I experienced Dragon Quest IX in a cardbaord glorified tent stationed in the midst of a battlefield of men and women with bullhorns demanding that attendees DO NOT STOP WALKING; KEEP MOVING FORWARD. However, I could certainly feel the vibrations on my palms. They were good vibrations. They felt like Dragon Quest music.

The plastic bit protruding out of the top of the Slime is kind of cheap, actually, and the DSi slid around viciously as I tried to play the game. Maybe if the plug meant for the headphone jack was stationary, and not attached to a cord, it’d be easier to keep the DSi right where it’s meant to be?

A quick look at the flier handed out outside the booth reveals why the headphone plug is on a far-too-long cable: the device is meant to be compatible with the original DS in addition to the DS Lite and the DSi. A footnote informs that the device is compatible with the original DS only as a speaker, and not as a stand. Aha. I guess the original DS doesn’t fit snugly enough on the allotted rectangle of blue plastic. Don’t want to neglect those original DS owners!

I have gotten this far without mentioning the squishiness: it is exemplary. Of all the squishy electronics accessories released in this 21st century, the Slime DS Stand — well, doesn’t rank among them, because it hasn’t been released yet. When it is released — alongside Dragon Quest IX, on March 28th, 2009 — it will definitely rank among the top five.

I usually play my DS games lying in bed, or sitting on a bus, so I at first thought I personally wouldn’t be able to make any practical use of this stand. Then I recalled all the people I see playing Monster Hunter on PSP in cafes and restaurants all about Tokyo, sitting at tables with their friends. Suddenly, the stand makes sense. It might just prevent carpal tunnel in me once and for all! And how cute would that look, me and three unsightly, unshaven friends, with four jiggly slimes on the table. We — well, while we might not get any supermodels folding paper airplanes with their phone numbers and landing them on our table, there’s a high probability that the manager of my local Starbucks will stop to think before kicking me out again.

Anyway, this bad boy goes on sale the same day as Dragon Quest IX — March 28th, 2009 — for 4,500. “4,500″ used to be conveniently translatable as “about $45″, though now it means more like “fifty-something dollars”.

This goes on sale in February for around $US 32. Pricey!
Wii Mat [Famitsu]