Its been a long time since I have owned a Thrustmaster controller although I had several
for my Amiga back in the day. Strangely, I had never thought about that name before...

I have been looking round for a wireless controller for use with gamecube games on my Wii
as my wired controllers don't reach from the console to the couch (comfort is everything).
A wavebird would have done the trick but these days these run to about £25-30 for new
imported one and so I thought I would look around for a third party controller. As far as I
can tell, the T-wireless is the first and only third party wireless cube controller available,
and at £13 it was worth a try.

The controller itself is about the same size as a normal gamecube controller and it weighs
about the same with batteries. Unlike the wavebird it has rumble and has a switch on the
controller so you can turn rumble off to save on batteries. The controller uses three AAA
batteries and although I haven't done any definitive tests the battery life is unlikely to be
that great and I would personally have preferred a bit more weight and longer lasting AA
batteries.

My first impression was that the build quality wasn't as high as first party controllers, with
the battery contacts being a little out of alignment (but easily pushed into place) and the
cap on the receiver thing that plugs into the wii being loose.

The button layout is more or less the same as the SNES/classic controller but as it is a
gamecube controller there is no "select" button which is annoying if you are playing VC
games with it. The buttons felt solid enough, as did the decent sized d-pad (no problems on
pac-man).

The analogue sticks are a bit stiffer and springier than the classic controller and they don't
have those little groves to force you into into the eight directions. On the shoulders of the
controller, the Z buttons are above the L and R ones rather than inside like the classic
controller. The L and R buttons are simple buttons and don't have the travel-and-click
mechanism which might frustrate in games designed to treat the L and R as two buttons
rather than one.

Overall, the controller was worth the price and depending on your taste with regard to
button layouts, analogue sticks and rumble it might even be better that the wavebird.

Pros:
Half the price of a new imported wavebird, about the same as a classic controller.
Rumble that can be turned off on the controller.
No perceivable lag.
Comfortable shape and size.

Cons:
No "select" button.
No travel on shoulder buttons.
3 AAA batteries.

http://www.thrustmaster.com/product.aspx?ProductID=95&PlatformID=10