Rllmuk Arcade Stick Thread

[88h88]

I couldn't help myself, I ordered another Brawlstick to keep 'on ice' until I feel the need to modify again.

This is the bitch of the bunch. Taking off the stock artwork is easy enough but it leaves loads of residue behind. You are going to have to scour like crazy to get it all off, my right thumb is still a bit sore today. I soaked the excess in furniture polish for 10 minutes which burned a lot of it off, but it was still very stubborn.

Acetone is king. Scrape off the plastic top for the artwork and then place the plate in acetone for a few minutes. Use a scraping device (razor blade) to remove the residue which has now soaked up all the acetone and completely forgot that it was supposed to be sticky and in 5 minutes you're done and your thumbs won't be hurting.

Anyway, nice work on the stick it looks great.

[Jbone]

I couldn't help myself, I ordered another Brawlstick to keep 'on ice' until I feel the need to modify again.

They are such unbelievable value. I'm pretty close to ordering one too, but resisting so far.

This is my current stick (I've wiped the dust off):

[mechamonkey]

Is anywhere doing a 360 cheapie brawlstick? I want a 2nd stick

[joffocakes]

That stick is lovely Mr Jim Archer. I am jealous.

[Down by Law]

I got mine from zavvi for £25 delivered, shipping wasn't to bad either, ordered on the sunday, got it on the Wednesday.

Thanks for the tip on the acetone stuff, if i come to change the artwork or buy a second stick i'll definetely be using that stuff.

[Jbone]

Incredible post, thanks! Some of that is pretty mind-blowing!

On the weekend I ordered a Suzo 500 to mess about with

It was only £5.99 or something, so not like taking a chance on a 20 quid Japanese stick. Oh, and I have an LS-33 spring on the way from Gremlin funnily enough. Again, only £1.50 so worth the experiment. I'm not sure whether to "finish" my own stick or buy in something that I can hammer. Those Etokki Omni sticks are luuuurvely.

EDIT: it sounds like we have similar tastes/objectives actually (except I always love playing grapplers), so it really is interesting to hear about what you've tried out. Don't forget to post pix when your hybrid stick is finished!

That stick is lovely Mr Jim Archer. I am jealous.

Thank you, sir

[88h88]

They are in a way but by the time you stick decent parts in it you're looking at about £60 all in. Still not bad except I saw a TE Round 2 go for £55 on ebay the other week and I kinda wish I'd bought that instead. Obviously doesn't happen a lot, I just watched it as I was curious and then forgot all about it until I went back on ebay yesterday. http://www.ebay.co.u...984.m1438.l2649

The auction is no longer up. Was it new or used? I'd rather pay the £60 for all new and custom. £5 ain't no thang to get something personal and besides, tearing open a stick and knowing how the bits all work is a good thing.

I like the stick Jim, I may have to get into wood working.

[Treble]

Ah! If you've got a Madcatz, it's a billion times easier to fit in your own parts - Just follow any good modding guide for SE Models of Fightstick, they're all built the same. you'll be able to do it on your own no problem, took about half an hour to mod my 360 brawlstick with tools that just about rival a neanderthal.

Word of advice though - if you're going to install Seimitsu parts, grab an LS-32-01 or any flavours of stick that comes with the SS plate. Seimitsus are designed to be mounted flat to sheet metal control panels, so bolting it to the brackets like a sanwa is going to lose a few good millimeters on the mounting height making handling the stick during play rather uncomfortable. Oh, and buy snap-in buttons regardless of make, as screw-ins are a hassle to install on the leftmost side due to the bracket.

Trebs: you can go with Siri's recommendation of an MC Cthulhu with a DualShock connector wired to it; or, if you'd rather go entirely solderless (though you do have to crimp wires and QDs), there's the I-PAC with its DC adaptor from Ultimarc.

Paradise Arcade make a few exclusive tops. Otherwise, anyone with a good Seimitsu catalogue.

Thanks for the advice, and I’ve been cogitating on it a bit…

To make myself more clear, here’s what I have:

Madkatz TE stick (SF4 branding)

Madkatz SE stick (TvC branding)

Official Dreamcast stick

If the best way to get a new stick working on the DC is costly I may as well stick with the official stick I own, for the use it gets. This way it has VMU useage too. I was only going to swap to the SE stick as it’s prettier and I could possibly improve the parts.

As I have a TE stick, if I went down the conversion route it’d only be worth doing it on that one as it’s by far the best. I could then sell my other sticks to offset the cost, I suppose.

The question is, can the TE be modded so that it still works on my PS3, but also works on the Wii, Dreamcast and possibly other machines, with swappable cables?

[Jbone]

I like the stick Jim, I may have to get into wood working.

I was obsessed with Byrdo's Sticks at the time. He had this sort of low-profile natural wood look going on that I thought was amazing. Mine is obviously nowhere near that standard. In terms of looks anyway

[Jbone]

The question is, can the TE be modded so that it still works on my PS3, but also works on the Wii, Dreamcast and possibly other machines, with swappable cables?

My understanding is that you can pretty much do that with a Multi-console Cthulhu board. The only thing is that (as far as I can see) it doesn't have native Wii support BUT it does have GC support, which of course works with most Wii consoles.

EDIT: Actually if your TE is the 360 version, it's even easier to use Toodles' Kitty board. Sorry, you did specify PS3. Am blind.

[Tomdominer]

Hey chaps, I have a Hori EX 2 that I modded with Sanwa buttons and micro switches a while back.

Anyway, every since I did, the joystick sometimes leaves the right micro switch on when I let it go, so my character walks to the right.

Is there a way to exchange the joystick spring with something a little stiffer? Or would I have to replace the entire joystick (which sounds like a nightmare on the EX2).

[Jbone]

Hey chaps, I have a Hori EX 2 that I modded with Sanwa buttons and micro switches a while back.

Anyway, every since I did, the joystick sometimes leaves the right micro switch on when I let it go, so my character walks to the right.

Is there a way to exchange the joystick spring with something a little stiffer? Or would I have to replace the entire joystick (which sounds like a nightmare on the EX2).

Is this what you did?

You can get at the spring if you can remove the metal circlip/washer thing at the end of the shaft. They can sometimes be a bit tricky to get off without a special tool, but if it doesn't clip all the way around a small flat screwdriver might be enough to flick it off. You can buy replacement springs from Gremlin if you think that will make a difference. I haven't seen the stick, so I don't know what will fit! Anyone else?

But to be honest, before you look at that, I would suggest just checking how the switch is seated. From the pictures on that site, it doesn't look like there are any "guide" pieces in the plastic to hold the switches in position before the gate is screwed down. It has possibly just moved too close to the shaft when you were tightening the screws that fix them in place.

[88h88]

My 2nd Brawlstick arrived today, it is so ugly it is unreal. In comparison to the modded one it feels so cheap and nasty. :/

######

[Tomdominer]

Is this what you did?

You can get at the spring if you can remove the metal circlip/washer thing at the end of the shaft. They can sometimes be a bit tricky to get off without a special tool, but if it doesn't clip all the way around a small flat screwdriver might be enough to flick it off. You can buy replacement springs from Gremlin if you think that will make a difference. I haven't seen the stick, so I don't know what will fit! Anyone else?

But to be honest, before you look at that, I would suggest just checking how the switch is seated. From the pictures on that site, it doesn't look like there are any "guide" pieces in the plastic to hold the switches in position before the gate is screwed down. It has possibly just moved too close to the shaft when you were tightening the screws that fix them in place.

That's the mod I did, yeah. The switch was held by the bolts and little plastic nubbins on the sanwa restrictor plate, so I assumed they couldn't move about that much, could they?

Anyway, I found a link with a guy claiming he had replaced the spring with one from a Sanwa JLF, so I'm gonna do that and put a square plate in as well...

http://forums.overcl...7994446&page=12

[lenticular]

YEAH I'M DONE, tried painting it so it was less ghetto but I semi-fucked it. not bad, plays gr8.

[lenticular]

i forgot the fucking dustcap

[88h88]

That was not enamel paint, was it? I'm gonna grab some car body filler to do the holes when I eventually get around to painting mine.

Nice work though, shiny.

[mechamonkey]

nice job lenticular big improvement on big sweaty men

Gutted I missed those, cant find a cheap 360 stick

[88h88]

Gutted I missed those, cant find a cheap 360 stick

Fuck. The one I ordered last week turned out to be a fucking PS3 one due to me not checking what I was clicking.

[lenticular]

That was not enamel paint, was it? I'm gonna grab some car body filler to do the holes when I eventually get around to painting mine.

Nice work though, shiny.

yeah it was, Plastikote stuff from my local hobby shop

[routeburn]

Just got an email from the akihabarashop:

We wanted to inform you that we will be getting new products from a new company called Akishop-Customs.

Akishop-Customs is soon launching a couple of interesting products:

* PS360+ (PCB for arcade sticks that handle Xbox 360, PS3/PC and PSX).

* HSB (Headset jack PCB for your arcade stick).

* Console cables (both cables inside your arcade stick AND from the stick to the console).

We want as good of a price as possible to offer you the customer so we are opening up for pre-orders regarding these products. We do not need any payment yet, that will come later, what we want now is to make a list to see how many pre-orders we can get so we can get the best price.

Please go on akishop-customs.com and read about the products first and if you find anything interesting and want to pre-order please send us an e-mail:

contact@akihabarashop.jp

In the e-mail please include: Full Name, Address and Quantity of each product.

Best Regards,

Akihabarashop.jp

[Barnard]

...So I build my own arcade stick out of wood and gremlinsolutions buttons and bits for use with MAME two and a bit years ago and nobody tells me about GGPO on the PC.

What is it with you people!!!1!

p.s how comes I can do dragons punches easily in 3rd strike but struggle with Super Street Fighter 2 turbo?

p.p.s Braid the mind bending platformer is bloody great with a fight/arcade stick.

[Jbone]

Buttons are normally rated for 10,000 presses, so it depends on how much you use them. I guess they would start firing without being pressed when the mechanism goes, but I have never worn out a button I don't think. Although the stick I have just bought has a button with exactly that problem . More on that later.

Sticks seem to wear out a bit faster, which makes sense as there's more friction involved. I have no idea if there's a resource for pro players that advises on typical lifepans under heavy use. That would be pretty useful.

[Barnard]

I tried my best to get a game of Final Fight on GGPO today but there were no takers.

I thought I sold the spectacle of a 15 minute session quite well.

[Jbone]

I have my new stick!

I decided to go for the eTokki Omni Stick with Korean parts. The Omni because I think it looks great (a tribute to Sega's VSHG) and because it makes it really easy to swap in any part you want. Korean components because I fancied a change and I was reading good things about them.

Cost-wise it seemed fairly comparable to the dual-mod alternatives, but I forgot to factor in customs charges... I will say no more.

The stick itself feels great: the body is all metal and it's reassuringly heavy. Inside it's really neat and the mounting holes for various stick types are all present and correct. I'm too lazy to do a full mod/build these days so it's great that there's something out there like this that lets you try out different bits and pieces without putting in too much effort.

The "Fanta" stick: I've been wanting to give one of these a go for a while. My Sanwa JLF just feels really loose to me now (I hadn't used it for ages) and the extra tactile response from the stiff rubber (instead of a spring) sounded really interesting. I'd heard some conflicting reports on how it plays up-front: Tekken players apparently rave about how quickly it returns to neutral and how easy this makes double-tap motions; our very own Escape said in this thread that it was actually really good for 360/720 grappler moves, but not so hot on double taps. Pretty much everyone says that it makes it harder to hit diagonals. On balance, I would have to say that Escape was bang-on.

The rubber grommet is only at the base of the shaft. I'd assumed from looking at the pictures that the piece that sits proud of the mounting plate was also rubber to stabalise the stick, but it's actually just a big hole that the washer sits on top of. This has two effects: firstly it makes the stick really, really loose until it's pushed over far enough for the base to bite into the rubber; secondly, it means that the grommet makes a weird "wah-wah" type noise as it slides over the hole. I have grown to quite like the noise!

Once you're hitting the rubber, it feels absolutely great and it's pretty close to the feel I was looking for, but that looseness when it's in neutral is a bit of a killer and it's the thing that makes me agree with Escape that double taps don't feel that great with this stick. Also I had assumed that the rubber would allow you to hit the stick really hard without it jarring on the gate. Actually that's not true either, becuase the shaft hits the rim at the top at the end of every throw (where I thought there would be rubber, but there was only a hole).

The lack of any gate is actually pretty nice though and makes it feel really free and responsive. I find it really easy to hit diagonals (contrary to online reports), but weirdly more difficult to hit QCF motions. You have to raise it up much higher on the horizontal (than a Sanwa) to hit the Forward and disengage the Down at the end of that motion. So often I'm still hitting the diagonal and a DP will come out instead. Noobishly.

Finally the bat-top feels surprisingly nice. I thought that might be a deal-breaker as I'm used to ball-tops and have hated every bat that I've tried, but actually it fits quite nicely against the hand. I will definitely try one of the mini bat-tops suggested by Escape at some point.

The Crown buttons: So I was a bit wary of the stick, but everything I'd heard of these buttons made me think they were going to be amazing. The theory is that they have the sensitivity of Sanwa, but with the tactile feel of Semitsu. Sounds perfect! The reality is that they seem really inconsistent. I have eight buttons and the tension feels very slightly different on all of them. There are two extremes though: one that goes beyond being too sensitive in that it fires constantly, even if it's not being pressed; and another that is actually quite hard to press. Of the other 6, five are pretty good and I would say that they are of the standard I wanted. The sixth is much, much more sensitve. To the extent that if I want to hit three punches for an ultra in SF4, I have to make sure I hit this one very slightly after the other two becuase the activation point is much higher than on the other buttons.

The good news is that Ryan/Laugh/Mr eTokki has said that he will replace the faulty buttons. I am sort of tempted to waive this away as "getting a bad batch" or something, but really I don't think I'll be using Crowns long-term based on my initial impression.

EDIT: I should also have said that the Crowns have a much softer sound and less sharp plunger-to-base impact than the "usual" Japanese push-buttons. If they had consistent tension and sensitivity they would be very, very good.

That's it! Damn, I wrote much more than I intended.

[acidbearboy]

I hooked up my Hori RAP to my original Xbox with Mame via a joybox adapter, but the button layout was all over the place. Sadly there's no simple 'press the button you want as fire' option in the menu, so I was hoping somebody had a guide to convert default Xbox pad layout to the RAP or similar? Cheers

[Cthulhu Steev]

I hooked up my Hori RAP to my original Xbox with Mame via a joybox adapter, but the button layout was all over the place. Sadly there's no simple 'press the button you want as fire' option in the menu, so I was hoping somebody had a guide to convert default Xbox pad layout to the RAP or similar? Cheers

You need to get into the config menu (like the tab key on PC mame) mine used to be set on the white button, but I can't remember if I changed it to that. A lot of Xbox emulators had the config menu on R3 or L3

[Jbone]

You are an oracle

£40ish? They seem to catch everything from America these days. Japanese imports are more of a lottery.

Pretty much, yes. Coming from Korea I wasn't sure what the hit rate was like. It wouldn't be so bad without the Parcel Force processing tax. But I digress.

They do have a fair old dead zone. I think/hope I mentioned it.

You totally did, but I misunderstood: I thought you were talking about distance to activation. I was surprised at how much it flops about in neutral.

I mention the E because you're talking about hammering the gate, and it's a clear candidate for that sort of play.

Nah, that sort of play isn't necessarily a goal, I just thought a softer feel at full throw would be nice, instead of the usual *thunk*. I have recently installed an LS-56 in place of the Fanta, with an octo gate and a bit of rubber tubing around the end of the shaft to shorten the throw a bit. I haven't had a lot of play on it (Vita ) but it seems to be pretty close to what I want. The LS-56 was a great recommendation by the way! At least at this early stage.

Sorry - I forgot to mention this. It's a very common problem. Some of them feel firm like a Seimitsu; others are nicely cushioned; and a few are horribly spongy. Activation points are meant to be fairly consistent, though.

It's OK, I forgive you. I have swapped out the dodgy ones and that has improved my opinion of Crowns a lot. It is weird that I can feel a slight variation in tension across all of them, but I'll give them a fair chance.

I think I'm going to kind of slowly evolve this stick, so I will update my progress. I still have that Suzo 500 to do something with too, but it was actually in terrible condition when it came (what did I expect for a fiver??) so I'm going to need to fix it up a bit first (I have almost ghetto'd up a custom shaft, but it's not quite there)

EDIT: also those Saias sound awesome. I notice they have some on arcadeshop.de: are they the same thing?

[Jbone]

Yeah, that's why I asked RE the microswitches. It can be a minefield getting the right model.

The tubing I have is different to that I think: it's surgical tubing. You can get it in dive shops.

Your stick looks like it has come from the future!

[Retroid]

Could you mount a stick so it's on an angle like you hold a pen? I think that would be the best thing ever if possible!