A winner from Gravis! (Gravis Gamepad Pro)

Member Name: richard_richard

Product:	Gravis Gamepad Pro
Date:	24/05/04 (224 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Responsive , Value for money

Disadvantages: No USB connection

This Gravis game pad is a 10 button games controller designed for use with a PC.

The look of the controller appears to mimic the Sony Playstation game pad, with its twin handholds and button layout.

This game pad retails for around the £15 mark


Specs
This is a pretty versatile controller, as it has a total of 10 buttons available to the player.

This game pad is equipped with the standard 8 way controller, and this also has a hole in the middle which allows a small plastic joystick (supplied with the game pad), to be screwed into this fitting, if you so require.

The buttons are laid out much the same way as you would find on a Sony Playstation controller. Four buttons are set out on the face of the controller, with another four positioned on the back of the two handholds; this brings these buttons within easy reach of the fingers. To round off the buttons, there are Start button and Select buttons positioned in between the 8 way controller and four front mounted buttons. (I hope that all made sense!)

The controller is white in appearance with a purple directional pad and the main buttons being coloured, red, green, blue and yellow. All other buttons are coloured grey.

A decent length cord is supplied with the controller and this has a serial type connection, which needs to be plugged into the gameport on a computer, or computer sound card.



In Use
Once the controller has been plugged into the computer game port, it will need to be configured through the Game Controllers area in the Control Panel. This menu allows the action of the directional pad to be fine tuned, and can also be used to set up the button configuration on the controller.

Once all set up and configured, the game controller seems to work well with games that give you the option to use joystick or game pad. The ten buttons that the controller is supplied with help to make this pad function well with
most PC games?well apart from those ones that need about 100 different buttons!

The controller is very responsive and the design means that it fits into the hand easily. The buttons feel positive and the unit overall has a generally pretty sturdy feel to it. This game pad should be able to withstand the odd knock or two, as generally tends to happen with these controllers!

Reliability wise, I have used this controller for about six months and have not encountered any problems with it. I feel that the asking price of £15 is reasonable for a game pad that has a decent design and feels like it will stand up to years of use.



Conclusion
I would recommend this controller to anybody looking for a reasonably priced pad, with a familiar design to it. The ten buttons mean that it should be flexible enough to accommodate most games, although it will tend to suit the arcade style ones better than complex simulations.

Also the unit is well designed and pretty robust. Overall I reckon it represents a good investment for your hard earned cash!

Thanks for reading!

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