New USB Mech controller to give Steel Battalion a run for its money

Those of you looking at the image above might think that this is the fabled Steel Battalion controller, which came with the $200 box set of the game for Xbox. Well honestly, you would not be too far off base. This controller comes from the people at RIPLEIGH, who are attempting to tap back into this money well.

People want to be immersed in their mech combat, and with Hawken coming out at the end of this year, and Mechwarrior Online coming out sometime later this year, the market seems primed to have mech games come back into the limelight. This controller is called MEK-FU, and hooks to your PC via USB. It’s fully programmable, meaning you can set up any configuration that you would like with it. You can even configure it to work with tablet computers, which is ideal for the partnership that Hawken has with Gaikai, the game streaming solution. Pretty much, if you’re willing to lug around everything, you have a mech experience that cannot be beat.

As you can see, it has two joysticks and all sorts of buttons to press and things to flip. It’ll be arriving at the beginning of next year, just after the launch of Hawken on December 12. This sounds ridiculously awesome, and will add a level of immersion to Hawken and all the other mech games that (hopefully) come after it.

Source: Destructoid