Marvo GT-903 Multi-Format Steering Wheel Review

Performance

This wheel is a bit old school, actually, a lot of old school! It threw my mind back to the days of the PlayStation 2, the Sega Dreamcast/Saturn, and honestly, even further back than that, to the Sega Megadrive (Genesis to you Americans!) It’s a plug and play device for the most part, with it starting in D-INPUT mode when first connected. However, you can hold the Mode button to switch it to X-Input, this is important, as some systems will only work with one or the other. Plus, in windows X-Input mode it emulates an Xbox 360 controller, making it extremely compatible with many games.

Being the arcade nut that I am, I went for a lot of old-school games here. Honestly, you’re seeing some stuff going on here that is yet to be discussed on eTeknix, and I’m hiding much more… so I promise, I’ll explain the setup in the coming weeks. I ran the wheel in X-Input and D-Input mode and MAME seemed perfectly happy with either, which is a good sign. Of course, you may need to switch for games that use a combined or split axis for the accelerator or break in some games, so keep that in mind.

The wheel is really smooth too, I’m able to hold an angle steadily, allowing for easy drifting. The spring-loaded return means I can let go and grab the wheel, for some proper old-school arcade sliding action. I can one-handed drift with this wheel in Initial D8+ Arcade.

I certainly had more fun than expected. The wheel is fast and light. It did unstick a couple of times from the suction cups, but that’s more to do with my lightly textured desk. If I keep this wheel, I’ll likely screw it to a heavy piece of wood and put it on a racing cab setup… but that’s the sort of thing I do these days. All the buttons are responsive, and really, I have nothing to complain about here.

Forza Horizon 5 worked right away, I didn’t have to configure anything for basic driving. For manual, I did have to configure the sequential shifter though, but once that was in place, I was happily drifting around again. Albeit, I haven’t driven a car in like… 18 months now, so I was making a complete arse of it. I’ll stick to the old arcade games!

It does look the part though, and really, between the kids and me, it’s been fun to use a fixed wheel (we use gyroscopic wheels on the arcade) The pedals are easy for me to use, and for my daughter who can’t reach them yet, having buttons on the wheel soon fixed that issue.

Really, it helps make the arcade setup here a little more complete, more on the stick on the left another day, but with everything configured, I can play any game I want now with ease. The wheel looks stunning, albeit perhaps black buttons would look more modern, but it’s not like I haven’t embraced black and red on my setup already.