It's time for October's post

Recent SNK Playmore co-conspirators, Exar, seem to be cleaning up their act of making shoddy third party accessories, and making shoddy third party accessories with authentic arcade parts. Their first (?) foray into the cutthroat world of Sanwa-parts-in-a-cheap-plastic-enclosure will be the Exaprize USB Stick Sanwa Edition for PS3, avoiding all those bothersome licensing fees for Xbox certification. Quelle exaprize! The stick hits on November 23rd, at the decent MSRP of ¥9,429. Cheapest Sanwa stick to date? Not bad Exar. Not with this exchange rate. Good grief.

Tech specs:

• 1x Sanwa JLF-TP-8Y joystick
• 6x Sanwa OBSF-30 push buttons
• Model number EX0052

In other peripheral news, old school cheap plastic stuff makers Hori, have just released the Tactical Assault Commander 3. It's a palm rest with WASD keys and a USB mouse combo that plugs into the PS3. My interest in such a peripheral is less than zero, I'm only making a note of it because it continues Hori's long tradition of calling their peripherals "Commander" without looking completely foolish. How clever.