The Final Word hardware review

Hardware Review of VR Pro Model 9500
Manufacturer: Cybertronics

At first I was a little skeptical about a joystick that could function by merely tilting it in the air. The previous attempts at such devices have been rather poor. However, I was surprised at the precision the VR Pro had. It is without a question the best "baseless" joystick I have ever used. It was very responsive to all the movements and wasn't very difficult to learn. It is certainly a nice change from all of the force feedback joysticks, which at the moment are the current fad. The joystick itself is a nice piece of technology.

My biggest problem is that I really have no interest in playing my games without some sort of analog control (centering). It seems that Cybertronics has taken this into account by including an analog base that the joystick can fit onto. However, the joystick doesn't seem to function or respond as well when you are using it on the base. My other complaint about this base is that the joystick doesn't lock into place, it just slides onto the peg on the base. So, if your playing a game, there will be times that the joystick portion rotates on the peg and you've got to straighten it out. This was by all means an annoyance.

I tested the joystick on a series of different game genres:
(Baseless Version tested. These were all pretty hard to play with the joystick on the base.)

First-Person Perspective: (Quake, Jedi Knight, etc.)

The joystick handled these kinds of games pretty well.

Pros: Response time was excellent and control very nice.

Cons: Your arm gets pretty tired after playing for awhile. Thus affecting your response time.

Racing and Driving: (Viper Racing, etc.)

The joystick was pretty fun to use if you set forward motion to gas and backwards motion to brake.

Pros: It was neat to play a racing game this way (without an analog wheel).

Cons: The problem is that it was fun for a couple of races, but then I started using the wheel again.

Flight Simulators: (X-wing Alliance, Wing Commander Gold, etc.)

All in all it performed rather well.

Pros: Very precise in its response. Very easy to stick with an enemy in a dogfight.

Cons: This genre loses a lot of its appeal when you take the traditional analog flight-stick control away from it.

Overall:

A very unique piece of equipment. Unfortunately I view it as more of a novelty than a necessary piece of a gaming machine. Fun, for a while...

We used this controller on the following system configuration:
    Microsoft Windows 98
    Intel Pentium II 300Mhz
    256MB RAM
    Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (videocard)

You can find more information about this product at either of the manufacture's homepages:
Cybertronics
Cybertronics Canada

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(10/99)