WIMMD: Nostromo N52

WIMMD: A little micro feature on the the buttons we press and joysticks we waggle!

Recently I was rummaging around in my computer detritus box. A box which contains, SD card adapters, proprietary USB cables for devices I have long since lost, devices which have long lost proprietary usb cables, external dvd drives, scratched DVDs with ancient Linux distros etc etc and Controllers, I have collected quite a few, and I'd like to share a few of my favourites.

With the advent of the WoW Classic release (ed: Dude that was half a year ago?!!) I decided to dust off an old PC controller from the late 2000s the Belkin Nostromo N52. I initially briefly mentioned this over a decade ago when I had a sour rant about Steelseries' crappy WoW mouse. Now I know it looks like an abomination of a peripheral, akin to that of the weird human/alien hybrid in Alien Resurrection:

Except rather than Ripley/Alien it was a genetic material threeway with a mouse, joypad and a keyboard. So what the fuck made me buy this atrocity? Well actually several things, WoW was definitely the forefront of these reasons, but mostly I was intrigued as, despite being a keen PC gamer...

...I am not a huge fan of the "Keyboard and mouse" combo... 

Dun dun dun! Hot take! Typing on a keyboard is for typing words and I do not find typ-a-typing particularly comfy or nice for gaming. Yeah, yeah I heard all the arguments, better accuracy or fidelity and all that stuff when you initiate that (r)age old argument of mouse and keyboard over joypads. But as a sofa PC gamer, ultimately I'm always gonna be in favor of controllers over sporting a keyboard on my lap. This is supposed to be used with your left hand, with your mouse in your right.

The one amazing feature of the N52 is all that thumb action, swapping WASD for a D-Pad and placing 2 trigger buttons in there, for a finger that is typically used to just press space bar! The rest is pretty self-explanatory, a second mouse wheel and all those keys are fully programmable, Autofire Modifiers all that lot!

Surprisingly for a product this old, all the software is still readily available, and even more surprisingly just works out the box. I had briefly thought I would just have to buy a new one of these...

... In the form of the Razer Orbweaver, which is a flashy £100  price tag, led lit, duplicate of the one I bought 10 years ago for 20 quid! So it seems these bad boys still exist in some form.

Quite honestly this is a great peripheral, offering instant accessibility loads more functionality and comfort than a PC keyboard. That being said, not a necessary peripheral at all, especially since you will likely be using it next to a Keyboard, but you know... Macros and stuff.

Love and Spam "1"

Richie