This is just an episode in the life of an ordinary gamer...
It was mid-January, well over a month before Street Fighter IV would be released. Mad Catz unveiled their Fight Pad and (TE) Stick Street Fighter IV periphery with SF artwork. The game and the controllers were sheduled for release in Europe on Febuary 20th. So I preordered the game and a Fight Pad with Ken design for the Xbox360 a month before release, bona fide that I'd be spending the weekend around Febuary 20th becoming a Street Fighter 4 legend. Or so I believed........
A week before release I got an email from my trusty gameshop that the Fight Pads had been delayed at least a month to some time in mid-March. Knowing that I'd be cussing all the time trying to play Street Fighter IV with the craptacular 360's d-pad I was looking into my options. I read on the CAG forums that the Fight Pads were in short supply in the U.S, too.
So I asked a friend, lets call him
Snowcone 
, if he could look for a Fight Pad if he was to accidentally stop by a Gamestop or Toys R Us. He did and snatched one for me just 2 hours after I asked him! I was desperate and told him I'd like courier shipment since I wanted the pad to arrive as fast as possible, best way scenario: around the same day SF IV would arrive. The pad including shipping (with an estimated time of around 5 days to arrive at my doorstep) was $87, which at that time was 71 Euros, about 1,5x the normal retail price in Europe. But I just wanted it asap
4 days later SF IV arrived, I tried to play it with the 360's pad just to see how awful it is and I was reassured that buying a Fight Pad was a good idea. Unfortunately after the 7th day had passed, the Fight pad was still nowhere to be seen and I was afraid it would have been stuck at customs for some reason. At that time the Fight Pads here in Europe were even further bumped back to mid-April.
3 weeks later I got a notification from said customs that I need to come to their office to receive my package. I don't have a car so I asked friend to drive me over to their office, which is in the neighboring town about 14 miles from me. So I enter their office to finally claim my Fight Pad, or so I thought......
The first thing the lady at the counter asked for was the bill, which (of course *sigh*) I didn't bring because no one told me to. Then they made me open the package. So I opened it and held the Fight Pad in my own hands for the first time. But not for long. They took it from me, went into a nearby office and talked about something for a brief moment. After that she came back and told me that Microsoft has placed a ban on imported products, I tried to tell her that this only applies to their own first party controllers but I couldn't fully convince her. One of her colleagues chimed in with me and at least this issue was resolved. One step closer I thought. She then shifted up a gear and told me they had to verify that this controller is an original product and not a cheap pirated copy and in order to do so they would have to send the controller to an expert witness. I was suggesting she could check amazon.de or amazon.com, eBay and various other sites but she was reluctant. Even my new ally, her colleague was stunned
Verifying the authenticity of the pad by the expert witness would take about two weeks. On top I was told to send them a copy of the PayPal bill so that they could see the actual price in order to charge the tax on imports (which is 19% in Germany at the moment).
Ultimately this means I have to send them a copy of the bill, wait for two weeks for the expert witness to (hopefully) verify the authenticity, then ask my friend again to drive me to their office, to pay an extra 14 Euros (~$19) to receive the pad that I ordered two months ago.
Funny side notes:
1. with the extra tax the pad costs as much as 85 Euros, which is double the original retail price here in Europe and 15 Euros more expensive than the Fight Stick
2. She calmly whispered to me, out of pity I guess, had I not chosen courier shipment the chances of my package to be held back by customs would have been slim to none.
But nor the the
BIG punchline for those of you still reading my rant....
When I got back home from my little road trip I found a package lying on my doorstep. In it was the Fight Pad I had ordered from my local gameshop. The same pad that was delayed two months, the same pad that made me import a pad from the U.S, and made me pay 2x the retail price, that set this whole journey in motion. Somehow, while still being sheduled for April release, my trusty gameshop got thier hands on a pad and send it my way.
Ain't life a bitch?
P.S. If you meet a player called KaiserBLITZ while playing Street Fighter IV today, cut him some slag
