Umehara consulting on Mad Catz sticks

By Tom Bramwell Published 28 April, 2010

SFIV world champ to offer his perspective.

Mad Catz has announced that Street Fighter IV world champion Daigo Umehara will consult on its future product development and act as an ambassador for the company at gaming events.

Umehara will work with Mad Catz' designers to "offer a professional gamer's perspective to the Mad Catz new product development process", apparently.

"In my opinion, the Mad Catz Tournament Edition FightStick is the most realistic and authentic Arcade Stick available and continues to be my controller of choice when playing in tournaments," Umehara said in typically understated fashion. "I'm excited to be part of Team Mad Catz and look forward to working closely alongside with them."

The stick he's talking about, the excellent Mad Catz FightStick Tournament, is one of the best in its class, and the FightStick range it forms part of receives a refresh this month, with a new Tournament Edition S, which you can read about towards the end of our Super Street Fighter IV review.

Umehara is perhaps best known for his stunning performance in the Street Fighter III loser's bracket final of the 2004 Evolution tournament, when he parried a seemingly endless series of American fighting genius Justin Wong's attacks while on virtually zero health - before unleashing a massive attack to win the match himself. The clip has been viewed nearly two million times on YouTube.

His mastery of fighting games is pretty considerable, as you will know if you read our massive interview with Daigo Umehara about his life and career late last year. Which, if you haven't, you should, as he's a fascinating chap.

You should also check out our review of Super Street Fighter IV, which is out this Friday on PS3 and Xbox 360 and picked up a 10/10 score from Eurogamer's resident Street Fighter boffin Simon Parkin.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • nickthegun #1 2 years ago

    Ive got a TE S an it is indeed a sexy bitch. Or, as the wife calls it, 'a hideously ugly, enormous lump of plastic'...

  • actionfitz #2 2 years ago

    I think you kind of need to have played Street Fighter 3rd strike to appreciate how difficult what Daigo did in that fight was :)
    pretty bitchin.
    Should also check out on youtube the Capcom Fight club footage promo of Super SF 4.
    Daigo and Justin going at it with the new characters, pretty kick ass stuf if you're into fighting games.
    Personally im just proud of the fact I can semi reliably pull off the moves + specials of Ken and Ryu hehe.
    I think a Tournament fight stick would be wasted on me :)

  • Cheapshot #3 2 years ago

    Could he advise them on not having their damn sticks costing the earth!? I mean you can buy a 360 for the same price as the TE stick. :(

  • Ranger101 #4 2 years ago

    I thought Seth Killian was the consult? Looks like Seth's hands might already have become full in being Community Relations and maybe more for MvC3?

  • mr_shoe_uk #5 2 years ago

    So it will cost like a million pounds yeeeeeh?

  • Trigga_Tybalt #6 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 15:43:01 23-02-2012

  • chrisola #7 2 years ago

    The SE stick is fine aswell.

    The game pads (£25?) are fantastic for pads and would be enough for any player who isn't concerned about playing 'like in the arcades' or being 'pro' and just wants to play the game for fun. Problem is that last time people bought them all up and then flooded ebay with them at double\triple the RRP which didn't help anyone :(

    HORI make some fight sticks which are also good, and you can get plenty of sticks from random brands on Ebay, although it's easier \ cheaper if you play on PS3 or PC.

    Remember, the big time players have played more hours of Street Fighter than they have spent sleeping over the years and using a stick that wasn't 10/10 brilliant quality would probably hinder their game at the level the play at. It's like F1 cars where some just aren't as good as the best.

    Average joe? The £30 stick on ebay would do you just aswell as the £130 TE one.

  • nuanimal #8 2 years ago

    Ker. Ching.

  • FenderMaster #9 2 years ago

    hopefully he'll help make the SE stick and fightpads not suck...

    i use Sega Saturn USB padsfor SFIV, and they are fantastic, you have to be really careful though, some models are thrash, the dark gray/green ones are generally okay, far better than mad catz fight pads imo
    Edited by FenderMaster at 28/04/10 @ 15:59