The solution to controller inadequacies for fighting games is simple: Buy an arcade stick. For PlayStation 3 owners, the list of purchase options is short. You can buy a Hori stick, a Hori stick, or another Hori stick, two of which are sold in Japan only. Hori's Fighting Stick 3 is the only PS3 stick currently for sale in the US. Fortunately for us fighting purists, it's a good one.
The Fighting Stick 3 connects to the PlayStation 3's USB ports, which means it isn't wireless like your dear Sixaxis controllers. The cord is about ten feet (three meters) long though, which is for most purposes plenty of length. The stick has considerable heft and rubber feet, both of which work to hold the controller firmly in place on hard, flat surfaces. We have a tendency to be a bit violent with arcade sticks but had no problem with the Fighting Stick 3 moving under our mighty force.
Build quality on the stick is similarly impressive. The Fighting Stick 3 has a metal base and plastic outer shell with smooth corners that don't murder your wrists (unlike some other sticks we've used). The buttons are all snappy and convex, like you'd find in a well-maintained arcade, and the stick is tight but light. That's good. All PlayStation 3 buttons are accounted for, including L3 and R3, save for the Sixaxis analog sticks. There's even a turbo function with three different speed settings you can toy with, if that sort of thing matters to you.
With Virtua Fighter 5, the stick functions brilliantly. Attack strings and combos that had us contorting our hands around the Sixaxis proved no problem on the Fighting Stick 3. All inputs are registered with great accuracy, and the lightness of the stick and buttons makes play comfortable and effortless.
However, American arcade goers may need some adjusting to come to grips with the Japanese-favored design. The buttons, like many Japanese arcade buttons, are super-sensitive. We suggest disabling any buttons you're not using to avoid accidental inputs. As well, the control stick rotates inside of a square base instead of the typical American circle base--which means that the stick will fit into defined corners instead of rotating smoothly around. The square base is certainly no worse than a typical circle base, but it is worth considering if you--like us--have grown up on American arcade sticks.
Even if the Japanese design doesn't turn you off, there are some other concerns to note. The button layout is a bit odd, with most of the face buttons arcing down-right instead of the more common up-right alignment. For the only PS3 fighting game currently available, Virtua Fighter 5, this isn't a huge problem as you can map the L2, L1 and SQUARE buttons to accurately match the arcade setup. However, we suspect there will be comfort issues using the stick on any six button fighting game like Street Fighter. The downward arc is an unnatural position for your right hand. Maybe not so bad if you're among the three people in the country that play cross-handed, but we're not one of the few.
If you're wondering why we're only speculating on the stick's performance with six button fighters, it's because there currently are no six button fighters that will work with the Fighting Stick 3. Perhaps the saddest fact of the Fighting Stick 3 is that it is not compatible with PlayStation or PlayStation 2 software played on your PlayStation 3. Yeah, we were bummed, too.
But even with these drawbacks in mind, we highly recommend the Fighting Stick 3 to anyone looking to play fighting games on the PS3. In our testing with Virtua Fighter 5, we found the Fighting Stick 3 to be infinitely more comfortable and accurate than the standard Sixaxis controller. The quality of the stick and buttons is unmatched among home arcade controllers (unless you opt to custom build your own), and the size and weight are just about perfect. We wish the button layout was better and that the stick worked with the PlayStation 3's backwards compatibility, but if you want to play Virtua Fighter 5 or the upcoming Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, there's no better option.