Cyclone 3D

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Review: Cyclone 3D

See, InterAct has a couple of new products out-the 3D Program Pad gamepad and a joystick called the Cyclone 3D. If you're button-happy, these are meant for you. The Cyclone has 17 fire buttons (yep, that's not a misprint-17); the Program Pad has 10, plus an eight-way directional control. There are games that don't have as many action-keystrokes as these things have buttons, y'know?

But for games featuring user-programmable buttons, both units are useful. The Cyclone is aimed particularly at flight-sim players, who may appreciate the ability to set controls to multiple stick-buttons. It'll certainly take someone used to the complexity of a set of flight controls to make full use of the programmability-it's not at all an intuitive process, and the slim manual isn't much help. For that reason, it's better to use the included 3DPS program disk-which allows onscreen button assignment-until you're used to the direct-programming process.

I gave it a whirl with Starfleet Academy. The stick handled the programming nicely, saved out the key assignments to a recoverable file, and brought up my choices quickly in the middle of battle. A nice addition is the ability in "page 1" programming to assign as many as three keystrokes to a button, although that reduces the number of available keys ("page 2" allows one key per button, but you can use all 17). The stick itself is made of light but solid plastic, lacking the heft of a ThrustMaster or Suncom stick, and it has a reasonably comfortable grip that's molded to fit in either hand. The Cyclone's play was a bit loose in Starfleet, but not so sloppy as to be obtrusive.

The 3D Program Pad works on the same programmable motif as the Cyclone, with four extra thumb-manipulable buttons on the pad's underside that'll mostly be useful for fighting-game or sports combo moves. What makes it a good choice next to the likes of Microsoft or Gravis pads is its $39.99 sticker price. Amazingly, that's the same tab for the Cyclone, too. At value for price, these are very real choices for your controller needs.-- Joel Strauch / GamePro