Like many other gamers out there, I'm a big fan of all the latest hardware and gadgets designed to make my life easier. For many years I've used a Microsoft Strategic Commander and it has done me well but is now very worn out and I've been on the prowl for a new product to replace it. Fortunately, while checking out all the new toys at E3 this year, I was lucky enough to get my hands on Zboard's latest product: the Fang Gamepad.

For those not familiar with Zboard products, they came on the gaming scene in 2003 with the Zboard Gaming Keyboard, a uniquely designed keyboard designed to have multiple faces designed around your favourite game at the time. They then followed this up with the Merc Gaming Keyboard, a standard keyboard with an extra 34 keys on the left-hand side of it designed around the most common gaming keys, and on June 1st this year, they will be releasing their new one - the Fang Gamepad.

The Fang Gamepad was originally designed for the US Military for use with what they call 'training' (and we call 'gaming'), with games like VBS1 (Virtual Battlefield Simulation version 1) which is an offshoot of Operation Flash Point and First to Fight. The Fang Gamepad has 47 unique keys and is designed to be ambidextrous with right and left handed thumb buttons. If you are a current Zboard user you should be familiar with the layout as it is similar to their other products. The Fang Gamepad comes with a full set of multimedia buttons across the top (such as play/pause and volume controls) and two status LED's - an "Enable" LED that illuminates when you are playing a game that has a pre-defined Zboard config, and another LED that does ... well, nothing as yet, but I'm told it is reserved for the elusive "future use".

The device is perfect for those who like the Zboard products but also like non-standard keyboards. I've often looked at Zboard products as a replacement for my Strategic Commander but I use an ergonomic keyboard, and I'm not willing to go back to a standard keyboard just to use their game-specific ones - making the Fang Gamepad a perfect accessory for me. The gamepad itself has been well-designed not only for using but for storing and taking to LANs. It has a removable wrist rest and the height is adjustable so you can set it up to your own comfort. It also comes with a carrying handle so you can hang it up and a cable organizer to wrap up the USB cable when not in use (or when you want a shorter USB lead).

The keypad itself takes a little getting used to, with a learning period that involves performing a bunch of funny looking mistakes to the enjoyment of the other players on the server. However, once you are familiar with the layout, it is very easy to use with all the buttons in easy to reach positions from your resting hand position. The learning curve is pretty steep - once you've worked out where the buttons are and what they do, you're set.


One of the problems I have noticed with devices of this nature is that they typically only allow you to hit one button at a time - the Fang Gamepad however allows you to hit 7 simultaneous keystrokes for all your head-banging needs, and it also uses what it calls "Phantom Keystroke Elimination", meant to deliver superior simultaneous keystroke response. The only thing I can fault on the device itself is that there is no "0" key. They compensate by having "10" and "11" keys, but personally I would rather have a 0-10 keypad than a 1-11 keypad.

Once installed the software is easily accessed by pressing the Z button on the top of the gamepad or using the tray icon. The software is quite simple, I might have been missing something at the time of writing this but I couldn't work out how to setup my own custom config, or if in fact if I could at all (after a bit of contact with Ideazon I have been told that this feature will be included in July). However it does come with 26 configs for all the latest games and I would be very surprised if every game wasn't covered by at least one of these configs. I've also been informed that once the product has been launched the number of supported games will go up to approx 80 and new mods will be downloadable via their website. The software (which includes multiple skins to change the look and feel), is also designed to display the keypad layout in a print-friendly manner, so you can have a paper copy next to you while playing rather than having to Alt-Tab out of game to check out what key does what.


(click here for more photos and screencaps)
Overall I liked this product. It felt nice to use and had enough buttons to use as a non-mouse hand keyboard replacement. If anything is letting this product down at all I believe it would be the software I would really like to be able to easily create my own custom configs and I wasn't able to do that (well not for another 2 months). Hopefully this will be an addition in future versions of the product. That said; if you're looking for a non-mouse hand gaming device I would happily recommend the Zboard Fang Gamepad.