Dubbed the Arcade Stick Inazuma, this is, well, an arcade-style stick, but with a cool feature: wrist rumble.
While using this GameTech stick, you can wear a special strap on your wrist and get force feedback while playing. I’ve never really thought about wrist rumble before, but I’d certainly be keen to give this a try.
As noted on Inside, the 8-button, 2.5kg stick is for the PS3, and features like programmable macros as well as a headphone jack. Pre-orders are underway in Japan and the stick is priced at around $US90.
アーケードスティック電（INAZUMA） [GameTech via Inside]
Comments
6 responses to “New Arcade Joystick Comes With Wrist Rumble”
Pretty sure wrist rumble is actually the slang term for the affliction that comes from spending too many hours on redtube….
Personally i just find the idea of a rumble pack for your wrist weird.. I mean, force feedback for hands makes sense because it’s meant to represent things in your hands, such as guns, or swords, etc.
It could be awesome for simulating when your alarm goes off on your wristwatch in a game, though!
Having the rumble in your hands also makes sense because it’s just a floating object not connected to anything else, you’re constantly holding onto it so you absorb all the vibrations when it goes off. Whereas a stick, it might often be sitting on a table or desk (or embedded in an arcade machine I guess) so those would probably absorb a lot of the vibrations. And amplify the noise maybe. Whenever I use a stick, my hands are mostly floating above the stick with the only solid contact being at the wrists on the bottom edge. Only doing a quick test with the Wii U gamepad and a similar position, the sensation doesn’t feel particularly strong, so I guess a rumbling arcade stick would probably be fairly similar. So this way you constantly have a point of contact to provide feedback (although that said being on the wrist does seem rather weird… but I guess the only other alternative would be to have something that straps across the palm of your hand, but that could be uncomfortable and obstruct movement on the controls). The only other alternative would probably be something like to embed the rumble within the knob of the stick itself, but then playstyle varies a lot between people and some don’t hold it very often/strongly at all.
…all the things you never bothered to think about til now 😛
I look at it and think the game Rez… we know where that wrist device will end up going.
If your friend has one, dont wear it, you know where its been 😛
Inazuma is lightning in Japanese. Maybe the wrist strap gives you electric jolts?
Try fighting blanka and see what happens.
Hah, I have a knockoff beatmania controller from the late 90’s with wrist rumble attachments 😀 They look identical to this pic too! Except mine have red lights on the end.