When Spider-Man came out in the theaters, it broke box office records. Naturally, that also means licensing everything in the world. The games were good, but Naki thought that wasn’t enough. Now, you can get a GameCube controller to show all your friends that you’re a spider freak.

It looks like a Spider-Man controller, of course. Red and gray with webbing on the front, and blue in the back. There isn’t an official GameCube controller that looks like this, so if you want a red plug to click into your GameCube, this one has it. The A button has been mysteriously replaced by the image of a spider. All you that suffer from arachnophobia might want to stay away, but anyone else probably won’t mind its looks because of the spider-things on it.

The pad’s strongest feature is its comfort. This thing melts in your hands, though not as well as Nintendo’s own controller does. The grips are noticeably longer than that of the standard controllers, which is good for your other six non-gaming fingers. There’s also a small patch of rubber on the tops of these grips, which at first, seem to be just for show, but are actually perfectly placed for the balls of your hands, which really feels nice. You won’t need to adjust to holding this puppy at all.

The control stick is virtually the same as the one you’re used to. X and Y are set a little high compared to A, giving a few problems when trying to hit X or Y when still holding the A button. The L and R buttons travel perfectly down to the click, with just a touch more resistance than Nintendo’s controller. The C-Stick handles much tighter than the C-Stick in the GC Pad, which might be a problem for FPS games or other games that require a lot of C-Stick action.

This controller does have some major issues. The biggest flaw on the controller, by far, is the D-Pad. Or, better said, the D-Button, since you can press the whole pad surface into the controller from the middle, which has it function more like a button than an 8-way pad. It still does work when in menus and such, but it’s not even close to being the D-Pad replacement solution from the GameCube controller in games like Capcom vs. SNK 2. It’s a big oops in an otherwise well-done controller layout.

Some of the other features of the controller are a bit suspect as well. The rumble does have some kick to it; so much so, that it shakes every loose button on the controller. In other words, the rumble is loud. Not to the point of annoyance, but you’ll hear the controller. The other beef the controller has is its turbo feature. Simply hold down Turbo and press the button you want turbo, right? Yeah, but it seems to accidentally turbo other buttons too. When trying to set the B button to turbo (for Wave Race, hint), it seemed that it also set the A button to turbo as well (which, coincidentally, made me go faster. Hmmmm...). This might just be this controller, but it’s hard to tell with just the one.

Everything said, however, this is definitely a decent controller for the GameCube, if you don’t mind the Spider-Man theme. If you’re looking for a controller that has a better solution for the GameCube’s small D-Pad, this isn’t it. As for buying it, you’re still better off with Nintendo’s own corded controller (or a Wave Bird, of course, but that’s in a class by itself), but if you really want it, you’re going to get something that’ll work for you just fine.