Dom Robinson reviews
Mad Catz Dream Pad
for Dreamcast
Distributed by
Mad Catz
"It's all about control - and I've got lots of it", so spake Janet Jackson on her 1986 debut album,
cunningly entitled "Control", but how much of that do you get with one of these?
The first thing you notice is its slightly bulky feel compared to a standard Sega joypad. Whereas the
sides of that one are almost vertical in the main part, the Mad Catz Dreampad has more of a crescent
moon shape, the extra size being used to its advantage to contain rubber patches for extra grip, not that
I've ever felt the Sega version falling out of my hands due to the lack of these.
The controller also comes in five colours: a standard cream-coloured pad, looking not drastically
different from a Sega original, plus see-through blue, green, purple and red. It also includes the
standard slots for a VMU and vibration pack.
The main advantage with this pad is that you can reprogram the buttons to perform the functions of
others. It's quite simply done - press the 'program' button, positioned about halfway between the
'start' and 'A' buttons, which then turns orange, then if you want to, for example, re-map the function
of 'B' to be used from the 'A' button, press 'A', after which the program button will flash, then 'B',
which will then turn off the light on the program button. However, the Dreampad is not fully
reprogrammable since neither the rear shoulder buttons, nor the analogue joystick's functions can be
altered.
There are two extra buttons for which you can program as desired, which are labelled Z and C, to
extend the choice from the standard four. Unfortunately, the positioning of these is wrong, since
compared to a standard controller's four (X, Y, A, B), these are placed at approximately where the
Dreampad has its upper four (Y, Z, B, C), which means some remapping is required to stop accidental
presses of the wrong button.
I tried three games out with the Dreampad, two of which fared pretty well -
Crazy Taxi
and Sonic Adventure - although I mainly used the lettered buttons and analogue joystick for these, while the
directional buttons didn't quite do the necessary in
Shenmue,
making it difficult to control the principal character, Ryo, when turning him
round and guiding him towards doors and other objects before I could select them.
If you need a controller with programmeable buttons, then take a look, otherwise you'd be best
sticking with Sega's official joypad.
Overall: 3/5
This review was on Freeloader.com before they closed down.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
