Street Fighter IV controllers question/Joysticks in general

[dai jou bu]

[EU03]

I spent 200 for my pop'n music controller and am looking to spend 300+ for my next IIDX controller once I garner enough money (and courage) to do so. If I had a Japanese 360, I would probably have bought that Otemedius stick, too. :m
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[DJ]

I know two different dudes who have both spent well over $1,000 on Bemani stuff in general, from custom controllers on up. Just sayin'. Shit ain't that uncommon and the price justifies itself if it's good enough.

One of them has a program on it that records the number of clicks per button, and upper-left is at well over 2.5 million as of last week for his custom made Beatmania IIDX controller.

In his case, the extra money's worth of quality eventually paid for itself.
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[MjFrancis]

Dai jou bu, you contend that the intrinsic value of a stick varies from person to person - this was never disputed!

Pretend you can only use it for Street Fighter IV, if that helps you understand. Otomedius Gorgeous had a very lukewarm reception, at least among English-speaking internet forum posters. The contention is that the Street Fighter IV TE sticks will likely see more use during Street Fighter IV play than the other stick will with Otomedius. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and there could be some geeked out otakus playing Otomedius every night! That does not change my contention that there will be more SFIV fans whipping out their tournament sticks, and more of them will play for longer than the equivalent Otomedius fan.

Take the Beatmania IIDX controller - very expensive, yet it will find a buyer - it's the best controller for that port. It's an awesome game series with a hardcore fan base. Same with Virtual On and DDR or whatever have you. The Otomedius controller couldn't be substituted with an eBay listing showing a $485 IIDX controller there, because that controller has a good chance of being brutalized on a daily basis.

The "re-read it" comment probably rubbed you the wrong way, but it wasn't written for a wise-ass reply, it was written because there was a genuine misunderstanding.

[adonis]

My problem with the SFIV TE stick is that it's UGLY. It is more easily modded than the Hori sticks and that's one thing strongly in its favor, but if I am going to drop that much money on a stick I want something slick looking.

But, yeah. That's American arcade stick design for you.

The lower-end stick is not that bad though, design-wise.
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[ReroRero]

Guess who's address Amazon won't ship the HRAP 3 to. Anyone know of any places that offer it for an equivalent price and will either ship to Australia or are based in Australia?
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[EU03]

[DJ]

[dementia]

I just thought I should share my stick mods





First is a Hori Fighting Stick EX2. Seimitsu buttons and balltop. Same shitty Hori stock lever, and octagonal Sanwa gate. EX2 is a shit controller in general and the stock PCB eventually died. One day this summer I'll probably gut it and replace it with a Cthulhu board for PC/PS3 play and drop a real Seimitsu LS-32 joystick in there.

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Next is my Hori Real Arcade Pro .EX for Xbox 360.



I replaced the crappy Hori stock buttons with real Sanwa OBSF-30s (and yellow OBSF-24s for the start and back buttons). Since it's an HRAP, it came out of the box with a Sanwa JLF joystick, so all I did was replace the balltop to match the new charcoal-colored buttons.

I was visually inspired by Sega's Virtua Stick High Grade for PS3 which is why I chose the color scheme.

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I am working on a full custom now. I am still not sure what kind of PCB I'd like to put in there. I thought wireless 360 or PS3 would be cool, but I'm concerned about lag. Leaning towards hacking a DualShock 2 in there due to the console's expansive library and the controller's compatibility with lagless PS3 and GCN/Wii adapters like inPin and Joybox.

[DJ]

I never realized how easy this stuff actually was until I tried it.

(All this was snapped on my sub-standard american cell phone. sorry!)

Here's my $130 absolutely-coddled HRAP3 going under the knife by a very jittery me reminding myself as I pry shit out of it with a large sharp screwdriver that I cannot get this thing replaced under warranty and my best bet if I fuck up is to buy a new one, which I can't afford to do. Amusingly, you can see which buttons I've replaced already vs. which I haven't from one quick glance:



You can also see the square gate sitting on the tray in that photo; the octagonal replacement is already in place.


Here's the finished product:



The harsh light and lack of flash bring out all the fingerprints I mean to clean off it VERY SOON, but you get the idea.
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[dementia]

Neato DJ. I really like HRAPs for their ease of modification (though the newer ones don't have Seimitsu-friendly mounting plates AFAIK :cry: ).
But yeah, after 10 minutes time spent modding you never have to deal with those terrible Hori stock buttons again.

[NFG]

I used to really love this stick:


It's next up on nfgcontrols for a review... Short version: I've grown to dislike Sanwa's sticks, despite the creamy octagon gate, and the buttons tend to bind which makes me insane. Still, silent optical mechs are cool.

(This one was heavily modded, removed the LCD plate and re-coloured the buttons and rings from a couple of other sticks. Also, it's USB now.)
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[dementia]

I have always wanted to try one of those ASCII optical sticks. They're rather scarce though, correct?

Going back to the square vs. octagonal discussion, I actually prefer Sanwa's square gates. If I'm not mistaken, the octagonal GT-Y was developed for Virtua Striker, and was never really intended for fighters.
I suppose people often have a hard time adjusting to square gates because they tend to unnecessarily ride the lever to the edge of the gate while playing or are just more familiar with American sticks.

[NFG]

I had three of those optical sticks until last week when I ebayed two of 'em. They ARE rare, yes, unless you live in japan. I had no trouble buying one or two a month.
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[DJ]

Well, the reason I prefer the octagonal sticks is because I had the Dreamcast (unmodded, Capcom-color one they released with CvS1) version of the ASCII stick. Actually, hold up, I'll snap a picture next to the HRAP.



Jesus I need a better camera. I think that's gonna be my next big purchase. Geh.

Anyway, that stick right there, the white and yellow one, was easily my most prized possession for pretty much the entire lifespan of my Dreamcast, which sadly has died now after almost a decade of nonstop use (I've since adopted the PS3, hence I gear towards that end with the new stuff). I bought that stick for what was, at the time, an exorbitant sum (I think $70) that was inconceivably high when applied to a controller to play the game and not even an actual game itself.

Knowing what I know now, of course, the stick is honestly not all that great. It's durable as all hell, however, and it has the aforementioned clickless optical joystick in there. I've actually taken that entire joystick assembly apart, even going so far as to pull out the magnetic ring and take a look at it. The stick still works fine after my clumsy ass put it all back together.

To give you an idea of just how much I beat the piss out of that thing, check out the bottom of it:



That's some love, right there. That thing's been beaten around more than some grade schooler's beloved lunchbox w/ matching thermos. The "clean" parts are where random stickers used to be, and the metal surrounding those patches is actually a few millimeters higher, I can only assume because there's so much oil and other detritus built up on it because that thing got passed around so much. Which is kind of fucking gross, now that I think about it.

Anyway, thanks to the octagon gate on that stick, it's simply what I got used to. I like having a little notch for the primary four directions in addition to the secondary ones -- when you're used to this, square gates feel incredibly weird sometimes because you're instinctively poking around for that notch and usually wind up sliding into down-toward by accident.

It's something that really only happens if you're not used to the square gate, though, and it can certainly be re-learned. I haven't heard anyone really give me any conclusive reason why an octagonal gate would be worse in the long run, though. I think it's just a preference thing, same way that some people prefer bat-style sticks and some people prefer lollipop sticks. Sometimes you'll have someone try to give some kind of evidence to one side or the other ("The actual arcade cab has [whatever] on it so that is better!") but like most things it usually boils down to whichever style of stick you picked up first is the one you prefer and will go back to if given the chance.

As an aside, it's really, really hard sometimes to talk extensively about sticks and not have it sound like you're rambling on about the pros and cons of various styles of cock.
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[NFG]

[DJ]

[dmauro]

[dementia]

That's actually really cool. I remember Wavebirds lagged by ~11ms
Nice to see improvement.

[DJ]

[dmauro]

I just read further into that thread that I linked to and Toodles did some tests and could not find a difference between latency for wireless and wired controllers at a reasonable distance. So worry not.

[nothingxs]

[NFG]

[dementia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1e4k3Myyak&fmt=18

I wouldn't call the TE stick attractive, but functionally it's great for a retail product. At $150.00 it really feels like you're paying a premium for the SF license though.

[adonis]

[dmauro]

I really like the TE design. I would definitely change the faceplate out, but I think the sloped sides are great.

People who play games competitively say they can definitely feel 10ms of latency in a controller or adapter. I'm not sure how that works when a single frame is 17ms, but I doubt they're imagining it.

[Mr Peckerston]

[another god]

Street Fighter IV is pretty American as far as fighters go.

[dmauro]

[dementia]

[NFG]

[nothingxs]

[adonis]

Oh, wow. Was this picture taken just because of my comment? I have played on a Vewlix cab back when they first came out, circa 2006, and I didn't remember the panel looking so ugly. I guess I have to blame Taito indeed. I always liked the Lindbergh's cab much more than the Vewlix anyway.

[DJ]

Or Killer Instinct.

Which I liked.
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[adonis]

That joystick is growing on me, lol. I think I may be forced to face the fact that the only reason I didn't like it in the first place was that I thought it was designed by Americans.
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[dementia]

[layazero]

[Mr Peckerston]

[DJ]

[nothingxs]

[firenze]

[adonis]

Well, the analogy breaks down with the VSHG, because it is, after all, designed and made in Japan. The problem with sticks is that there's more or less only two "countries" making them: Japan and America, whereas cars are being made in Japan, America and Europe.

That's why I equated Japanese sticks with European cars. The Japanese sticks are the best sticks, and the European cars the best cars, if we take "best" to include also aesthetic design as well as performance and build quality. Again all of this is slightly vague, because the best performing European cars (Ferraris, Bugattis, etc.) are not also the most well-built (the Germans ones are), but overall I think it is a good, valid generalization.

To get back to the TE, the only thing that is American about it is the PCB-design, soldering, and generally the whole ease-of-modding thing. The parts are Japanese, and the aesthetic design is Japanese. If you replaced them with American parts (Happ stick and buttons) and American aesthetic design (X-Arcade, etc.) the only thing the stick would be good for would be for easily modding it with Japanese parts -- though of course the ugly look would remain, because you can't mod that.

In conclusion: I might buy this stick if I manage to find it. Together with the VSHG, they present the only real retail alternatives to the onslaught Hori unleashed in 2004 with the original RAP. It's a good idea to help foster competition amongst companies, and it's also nice to have some variety in the stores and in one's home collection.

What I find amusing is that Sanwa and Seimitsu occupy the position in the arcade stick market that IBM occupies in the console market. Just as all current consoles utilize IBM processors, all decent retail sticks utilize Sanwa or Seimitsu parts. I really do wonder though why Hori hasn't attempted to make parts itself of equivalent quality to Sanwa and Seimitsu. I mean, how hard can it be? Nintendo, Sony and MS need IBM because designing processors is not something anyone can easily do, but how hard can it be to make some goddamn decent sticks or buttons? And I mean, even just the buttons. Why are Hori buttons so much worse? How hard can it be to reverse-engineer a frigging plastic pushbutton?
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[adonis]

X-posted from my forum:

[firenze]

By the way, does anyone know a source to buy the newly released Xbox 360 RAP EX SE so I could get it shipped to the USA? This is a special edition stick with Seimitsu stick and buttons, it was released as a horistore.com exclusive in Japan. I'd totally love it for the many 360 2D shooters.

I just found out about it a couple days ago and it was already pre-sold out anywhere I've seen that could get it. I'd like to buy one if I found it for not a massive markup (i.e. I'm not paying $400 for it, but I do understand that MSRP + import markup + shipping is expected). If anyone here is actually in Japan and could get your hands on one of these we can talk too...

[EU03]

Yeah, I talked to a guy who asked NCSX to stock them...and now they have them.

http://www.shopncsx.com/horirealarcadeproexse.aspx

THough you'd better ask fast, since they're selling out REAL quick.
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