Belkin Nostromo N50 Speedpad

The Belkin Nostromo N50 Speedpad is a little unique as far as gaming devices go. The pad itself has been specifically designed with First Person Shooters in mind, which would clearly be difficult to play using a joypad or joystick. That is not to say that the pad cannot be used for other purposes. Any game that requires a large number of keyboard controls, coupled with mouse input, would be a perfect candidate for the Nostromo.

The unit itself consists of a hand-shaped device, which has a small keyboard at the front, with a multidirectional pad on the side, and a throttle wheel. The unit has a built-in wrist rest and a palm rest to ensure your hand is in the optimum position for gaming. Connectivity to the computer is via USB, and a generous 1.5 metres of cable is provided, which should be more than enough for most people. No external power is required, as all the power needed is drawn from the USB port.

Belkin provides all the necessary drivers on CD, as the unit is not directly supported under any operating system to date. This is not really a problem, as the Belkin drivers also include useful utilities to configure the pad, and customise its features to suit your needs. The keymapping utilities allows you to set which keys on the pad correspond to which keys on the keyboard. The interface for this is very easy to use, as a picture of the Nostromo is shown on screen, and clicking a button on the screen allows you to map a key to that button. The other utility provided by Belkin, allows you to load these configurations as and when they are needed. In fact, the utility can also launch different configurations automatically, depending which game you load! This is done by providing the path to the game's main executable file, and when this is run, the Nostromo automatically selects the profile associated with that game.

Although the unit only has 10 keys on its main pad, the Nostromo software allows you to set "shift states", where you can assign up to 3 different functions per key. All you need to do is designate a key that will open the access to other functions, (like using the shift key on a conventional keyboard).

The Nostromo N50 is a very good controller, especially for those who predominently play First Person Shooters, (such as Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Counter Strike). I can't really fault the unit on anything, apart from the fact that it is designed with only right-handed people in mind, (I am a leftie, but luckily I can use the mouse in either hand). The build quality is superb, and the software drivers and utilities are kept up to date with frequent releases. If you play FPS games, then this pad might be the one for you.