There’s literally a hex wrench hidden inside the RAT, and you need to unscrew the stock side plate and then screw in the new one. The pinkie rest is also swappable, though the process is a bit more involved. You can also swap out the default palm rest entirely, with two alternates: a rubber-coated grip and a smooth plastic finish. The former is great for fingertip grippers, the latter is more comfortable for palm grips, with quite a few settings in between as well. A discreet lever on the right-hand side allows you to slide the palm rest forward and backward, changing the overall shape of the RAT from a squat, almost-circular shape to an elongated oval. The RAT 8 is full of tweaks though, big and small.
“Ah, I’ve unscrewed something,” you think, and then…wait, what happened? Was that piece supposed to come off? Oh no, what do I do? Keep the manual nearby, in other words. Trying to learn the ins and outs of the RAT is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. Even the imitators don’t go quite as far as Mad Catz, don’t strip away so much of the mouse’s traditional identity. If Razer’s DeathAdder is the epitome of the modern gaming mouse, a design copied and copied and copied until it’s become characteristic of the entire genre, the RAT is the exact opposite. It’s ugly and unrefined, but in a way that feels purposeful and raw and intriguing. And yet the RAT goes to such an extreme, I find myself drawn to it. That’s an outlier for me! I’m typically not a fan of the edgy “gamer” aesthetic. It’s a polarizing design, but I admit I’m fond of it. Stripped of the plastic chassis that gives your average mouse a user-friendly face, the RAT looks more like military hardware, all metal knobs and scientific looking numbers and naked screws. How could I not? Even now, almost a decade after its release, it’s the most aggressive mouse design I’ve ever seen. I still remember the first time I used a RAT.