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March 28, 2024, 08:21:07 PM

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Arcade Sticks

Started by The Boston Crab, May 28, 2019, 04:38:28 PM

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I just got this through the post:





And a load of these:





And one of them:







Can't wait to void the warranty to fuck and back and do my head in with the click click clicking. I had one go and got to the last boss first go, it felt like an extension of my brain. No need to mod it at all but I won't be able to settle until it's got Seimitsu stick and Sanwa buttons in all red and black. Stick looks like a fucken clown nose!!!

Yeah I broke the crciut board


Jk it's fuckin amazing. Can't wait to play everything on this lil stick and click my way to da vic (victory).


It's like wiggling a clown nose and squeakin on eight clown noses hahah

80D

Now I truly feel like king of Kong! Can't get the clicking out of my head man, it's so satisfying I could die.

madhair60

I would quite like an arcade stick If I'm Honest. What is a decent affordable sticc?

The honest but unsatisfying answer is it depends on the system(s) you want to use it for and maybe the types of games. You're also better off spending a little bit more to get one with decent parts than having to replace or mod once you find it's unreliable or feels a bit woolly.

The one I got cost me eighty quid or so second hand but probably another forty for replacement parts. It's also a factor that 360 sticks are now harder to find so a little bit more expensive. Also most people would be happy with the Sanwa stick in this, it's top of the range, just not quite as well suited to shmups as it is to fighting games because you have to move it a little further. Good for shoryuken motions, not so good for tap-dodging.

My suggestion would be a Mayflash F500 because you can use that with pretty much any modern console and it's really easy to mod. Mine was actually quite awkward to mod the stick, requiring some wire stripping and quick disconnects and changing mounting plates and stuff. Not impossible by any means but more of a faff than I'd expected. The Mayflash is basically designed to be modded.

It's seventy quid new but I bet you could get one for fifty on eBay.


St_Eddie

I'd like to splash out on a trackball but I'm not sure that I can justify it solely for Marble Madness, as much as I love that game.

Arcade sticks are very appealing too but my flat has thin walls and I don't want to piss off the neighbour with clickety clack sounds at all hours of the day.

madhair60

Quote from: St_Eddie on May 29, 2019, 09:47:45 AM
I'd like to splash out on a trackball but I'm not sure that I can justify it solely for Marble Madness, as much as I love that game.

You could also play Crystal Castles and Segasonic the Hedgehog!


St_Eddie

Quote from: madhair60 on May 29, 2019, 11:14:30 AM
You could also play Crystal Castles and Segasonic the Hedgehog!

Aye, true.  I remember playing that trackball Sonic arcade game as a kid.  Great fun!  You would kinda need 3 trackball controllers for that though, to do it justice.  Way too expensive for the likes of me.

Quote from: St_Eddie on May 29, 2019, 09:47:45 AM
I'd like to splash out on a trackball but I'm not sure that I can justify it solely for Marble Madness, as much as I love that game.

Arcade sticks are very appealing too but my flat has thin walls and I don't want to piss off the neighbour with clickety clack sounds at all hours of the day.

I'd say that the clickety clack is not actually that bad at all, I'm just hamming it up for entertainment value. It's about as loud as someone quite gently typing like in an ASMR vid where the woman is pretending to be a receptionist at a hearing test centre or reiki practice.

It definitely takes a bit of time to get used to the movements on stick, and it took for me to go back to the pad to realise how much more immediate and precise a digital stick actually is than some long travel 360 degree analogue crapper. All those times that my movements seemed down to bad luck or incorrect input are now more black and white. I'm a bit better than I had actually been playing and as I get more used to the stick movement, I'm pulling off stuff that's no longer just down to luck, I'm able to do more of what my brain and eyes are trying to do.

Not sure how well it would work for platformers and stuff but I'll give them a go too.

OK, I finally did mod the Seimitsu LS-32 stick in. It's pretty much the best Jap stick for shmups, really springy and responsive and only a short throw to trigger the switch. It's also a short stubby looking lil stick too. All the minimal movement of a joypad with all the precision and CLICKKKKK of a stick. Can't tell you how fuckin psyched I am about this stick.


Twed

Having built an arcade cabinet as part of a team building exercise I discovered how many incredibly shit sticks and buttons there are on the market. Really unpleasant, tacky things. I don't think I'll ever buy an input device without some pedigree behind it.

That's something I'd love to do one day, sounds like a lot of fun even as a team building exercise. To be honest, I don't know anything about the mechanics or whatever, I just did some research on what's the best stick, what's the best buttons for shmups. Got them, got the stick. It wasn't completely straightforward, but basically just snip, strip and crimp the wires into quick disconnects/spade connectors, no soldering or circuit boards. Hardest bit was getting them onto the right connectors, I had about half an hour of swapping them around until the stick movements matched what was happening on screen!

It's amazing what a difference it makes though, you're right. The standard buttons felt mushy and mashy and loose next to the Sanwa which sound and feel so responsive and smooth. The Sanwa stick in there was obviously very good but the tighter spring on the Seimitsu and short throw feels much more natural and responsive. I don't feel like I'm consciously moving it.

Spiteface

I bought a MadCatz TE2+ for just under £100 not long after they went under for a minute. Been meaning to try a Seimitsu stick in it, and do some custom artwork for it.

I pretty much find playing fighting games with a pad to be almost alien nowadays, apart from Mortal Kombat, where the layout really is with a pad in mind. Street Fighter still uses the same layout it always has, so it still lends itself to a stick.

Quote from: madhair60 on May 29, 2019, 08:15:53 AM
I would quite like an arcade stick If I'm Honest. What is a decent affordable sticc?

The Hori RAP4 is a solid stick for under £100 on Amazon, or get a cheap Mayflash one and change the buttons and stick out for Sanwa/Seimitsu stuff. Any cheap stick would do the job for that purpose, provided Sanwa parts fit (In most cases they will)

When SFIV came out on XBox 360, I bought a MadCatz SE and swapped the buttons and stick out (Mainly because the stock stick was fucking shit on the early ones), served me well that entire gen.

Cuntbeaks

I was humming and hawing about getting a Pandoras Box 6 then I read about folk getting a Raspberry Pi, loading it with Retropi and attaching it to an X-Arcade Tankstick.

To be honest it looks hard as fuck, much more choice than a Pandoras Box and a much better interface in the Tankstick, which includes a trackball. Anybody have any experience of this sort of set up?


Quote from: Cuntbeaks on June 05, 2019, 11:10:37 PM
I was humming and hawing about getting a Pandoras Box 6 then I read about folk getting a Raspberry Pi, loading it with Retropi and attaching it to an X-Arcade Tankstick.

To be honest it looks hard as fuck, much more choice than a Pandoras Box and a much better interface in the Tankstick, which includes a trackball. Anybody have any experience of this sort of set up?



I had one of those, back when they plugged into a PS/2 keyboard port.

Really well built, but I couldn't get on with the Happ-style joysticks and I wasn't that keen on the straight rows of buttons either. Flogged it and bought a couple of Dreamcast arcade sticks when Sega were flogging them off for pennies.

lazarou

I had one of those, or at least the version without the trackball. Got rid of it in the end as I didn't really have the space for it, it's a fucking monster of a thing, but I liked it a lot. It's certainly not the best option for fast, precise control in the way japanese sticks are, but it felt much closer to the proper arcade experience for me. Bearing in mind that 'proper' in my mind relates to memories of playing on shitty chip shop or seaside arcade machines, and there's a huge nostalgia factor at play there that the faster japanese sticks with their flappy low-resistance buttons don't as much as glance off.

But yeah be warned it is fucking massive, the sticks are decent but not great and it is noisy as hell.

Cuntbeaks

Yeah, i had a look at the measurements and it is indeed an absolute beast that could probably put a car windscreen in.

In terms of the Raspberry Pi, is it just a case of buying one and then sticking Retropie on an SD card via your PC and popping that in the Pi?

Quote from: Cuntbeaks on June 06, 2019, 12:05:31 AM
Yeah, i had a look at the measurements and it is indeed an absolute beast that could probably put a car windscreen in.

In terms of the Raspberry Pi, is it just a case of buying one and then sticking Retropie on an SD card via your PC and popping that in the Pi?

Basically. And once it's all set up you transfer your games via FTP or USB stick. There's tons of info and instructions on the official site. It's also worth looking at Recalbox, a fork of Retropie, and seeing which one is best for your usage. Recalbox is probably the easier to configure and use, but Retropie has more advanced options.

Jerzy Bondov

The one thing I wish I'd known before making a Pi arcade is that MAME is a pain in the arse compared to other emulators. There are multiple MAME emulators in RetroPie and they use different rom sets, so you need to make sure your roms are from the right set. It's all on here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/ and is worth the effort, but it's not as easy as dropping on some Mega Drive roms and getting stuck into Cyborg Justice or whatever.

St_Eddie


lazarou

A nice detail on the x-arcade sticks that might not be obvious is that they've got two extra buttons under the left and right sides for playing pinball emulators. Also for any US-based folks, they regularly sell absolutely immaculate refurbs through their website and ebay page for a good $50 or more off the usual price (I'm sure I didn't pay more than $100 for the twin-stick model, and it was literally good as new). All this talk of them put me in the mood to see if I could find one of the relatively small 'solo' models but it seems like they might have stopped making them, urgh.

I really wish there was more of a market for that kind of western-style stick. The only other one I can immediately think of is the MK one that came out a while back and while it might be decent, it's also very specifically tailored for the MK setup on top of being an ugly piece of kit even by arcade stick standards. I doubt you'd fine one for under $100 these days anyway.


Some beautifully ugly creations here. I've started gathering materials to make a wooden case for my child.



That's as it is now but I'm going to put together the case and then see what I can do with the faceplate. Black doesn't look great with wood so I will either sand and use metallic paint or maybe get some laminated paper design on there. Buttons also look fucked up in red and black next to wood. Maybe I'll just sand down the plate and have one seriously black bastard, black buttons and get the black ball top back on the stick. People at all the tournaments will be shitting themself, especially if I wear black pants and black coat and sunnies. Like, who invited the Undertaken! Can't wait.

St_Eddie


Nothing is uglier, much less unwieldy, than the recent official Capcom emulator arcade controller...



...Nothing, I tell's ya!  Nothing!

Spiteface

Decided to start play Street Fighter V again.

I need to swap out the JLF in my TE2. Too much of a dead zone (meaning I sometimes don't dash properly because I'm not hitting the direction twice), and maybe a tighter feel is required also. Sounds like Seimitsu is probably the way to go. Possibly the LS-56.

Think I might hit up Focus Attack and do some art for my stick as well. I find this:



a little boring/generic to be honest. Especially when I could get some cool art on it:





Not this exact design of course, but you get the idea. Or maybe an etched plexi...

St_Eddie

I always wanted to buy the controller for Steel Battalion.  It's magnificent but I can't justify splashing out for a controller, just for use with a single game.  Look at it though, gaze upon it's beauty, for it is wondrous...


Should I ever win the lottery, that beast is as good as mine.

madhair60

I just bought a USB Kempston joystick. BEAT THAT. Oh, you have. Handily.