gooberking: (feel free to skip the text wall and just answer off the subject)

So there is the NEO-GEO bundle thing going on, which lead to playing some old KOF. Which then lead to me wishing they looked like KOF XIII, which lead to watching KOF XIII tournaments on YouTube, which lead to me going “I didn't know you could get that crazy with game”, which lead to me playing a bunch of KOF XIII (not in the bundle BTW), which has resulted in angry thumbs.

I suspect playing SF every day for 10+ years when I was young may have something to do with it, but I have a decade old issue with my thumbs, and I'm not sure the D-Pad and I are going to make it much longer as a pair.

I'm thinking a fighting stick should be a good answer to my problem, but I have concerns. First is I'm not sure what all is going on in that world. I expected they could cost a little more than a pad, but I was surprised to see they can cost hundreds of dollars. There also seems to be a lot of talk about moding them, and generally speaking, there is a lot more going on that I expected to find. I'm looking for some general dos and don'ts on the issue. Any “watch out for...” situations might be useful as well.

I've also found them to be very awkward to use in the past. A pad is easy, and comfortable to hold. It's been a long time since I had a stick, but I seem to remember constantly trying to find somewhere to put it, or hold it to be comfortable to use. I think I concluded the only comfortable place for one was in an arcade cabinet, so I'm worried about the size of the whole affair and how practical that is going to be to use.

I'm also worried about the stick part. I know all the serious players use them. I get why when it comes to the buttons, but the stick has always puzzled me. I remember there was at least one SF combo I could never do on a joystick but I could on a pad simply because it took way too long to travel from one position to the next. Left to right on a pad is like crossing the hall. Left to right on a stick is like walking 15 min to the bus stop. I get that the precision is greater, but the distance is so much greater I don't know how the pros are making it work. The D-Pad is my biggest problem, but I'm concerned about going stick, and would like to know if there are different degrees of movement for different sticks out there and if this is an issue that has been discussed in some way.

So, who knows about these things?

gooberking: I'm speaking largely from experience with sticks I had probably 20 years ago. I've avoided them since then. I am seeing a similar issue trying to use the analog stick on a 360 pad. There is just a lot more distance to cover. I'm sure you don't have to go edge to edge, but it's a lot of work fighting the self centering.

arrjayjee: The best stick I've ever owned is the Mad Catz Street Fighter 4 Tournament Edition. The stick has plenty of give and the buttons are responsive, and since it runs on the 360 controller interface it's purely plug-and-play. Plus, it has a toggle so that you can set the actual stick to be either d-pad or analogue stick if for some reason the game you're playing decides it needs one or the other. Personally, I think this stick is ideal for you since it uses the four-button Neo Geo layout (but twice because it's an eight button stick lol).

http://www.amazon.com/Fighter-FightStick-Tournament-Edition-Playstation-3/dp/B001M22WN8

A lot of the finer details come down to preference. Do you want a stiff stick with a bat head, or the looser, ball-headed stick? Do you want the Japanese arced button layout or the US-styled straight button layout? But if you're a newcomer to the fighting stick world, you probably don't have those preferences yet. The good news is that a stick made from proper arcade parts (I prefer Hori because that's what most Japanese arcades use, but Sanwa is good too) are interchangable, so you can unscrew one and pop out the buttons or stick and replace them easily enough.

tl;dr, find a 360 arcade stick with Hori or Sanwa parts. Avoid everything else as they've never been worth the money in my experience.

timppu: On which system? PC? Those were still the kind of analog "flightsticks" which are not really suitable for fast-speed fighting games, and the arcade sticks are nothing like that.

Have you never seen/played arcade (coin op) fighting games, which kind of controllers they have? Like any of the arcade Tekken games, Virtua Fighters, Super Street Fighter 2's etc.? At least those that I've played in the past, the travel from side to side is quite short, fast and instant, nothing like PC (analog) joysticks, or the analog thumbsticks on console gamepads.

The old digital Competition Pro joysticks for Commodore 64, Amiga etc. were more like the arcade sticks, but the arcade sticks were better than those too because of the heavier base so that you don't have to use the other hand to keep the joystick at its place. I recall those old joysticks didn't necessarily have that long distance either.

EDIT: One thing I've always found odd with those arcade sticks is that they are placed the opposite way than how I've always used joysticks both with e.g. Commodore Amiga, PC etc. On home computers I've always had the stick on my right hand, and left hand controls any buttons on the keyboard etc. This makes sense to me as a right-handed person as I feel the stick needs the better eye-hand coordination that my right hand has.

On arcade cabinets, it seems usually the opposite, ie. left hand controls the stick (movement), while right hand controls the buttons. It just feels a bit odd when you are used to the opposite.

Kronoor: The main thing about fight sticks is that you wont just "get good" because you get yourself a fightstick. It will take a while to get used to and to record that muscle memory. In the end it's really about what you like using the most.

But if you are going to buy a fight stick and use it often, don't go cheap. I would recommend the Tournament Edition sticks from Mad Catz.

Is there anything else you're wondering?