What arcade stick do you own?

If you have any soldering skills a Saturn adapter isn't that hard to make, or hit up Lemony Vengeance to see if he can make you one.



For custom neo sticks, I'm a fan of getting a cheap Madcatz SE and using Sanwa parts. The top row of buttons is a great Neo layout. Those sticks are getting harder to find though, may not be worth it now.

Jansen sticks are nice, pricey though.

If I'm gonna spend that kind of money I rather build my own or have someone make a nice wooden case.

Something about building a stick appeals to me...I feel like Hanzo forging a sword, lol.

@GohanX, Hyper just sent me a freebie in the form of ALL-Stars WWE stick, nice black case!

mjmr25 sent me a bunch of MCSE cases he gutted and experimented on, some betters than others, all very "puttyable" and done, instant success.

Gonna make a few button layouts by covering the extra holes with bondo.

Extra buttons are a turn off for me.

Yeah Jansen is nice...I have one of his tank sticks.





My goto stick right now is the Hori VLX. Im probably going to replace the panel w/ sega layout though one day if he has a sale.

HDRchampion said:

Yeah Jansen is nice...I have one of his tank sticks.

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My goto stick right now is the Hori VLX. Im probably going to replace the panel w/ sega layout though one day if he has a sale.

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That red tent gets me every time.

That looks awesome, way more awesome if it was 6 buttons. Hey, the pass through on those for the DB, is it just straight from the contacts or do you have to wire it from somewhere else?

EG, i'm sure it's just the screw terminals. The PCB isn't getting USB power but the button contacts are all there in the terminal. So passing them to the DB15 is all that's needed.

Thanks for the thoughts and advice, guys! Another option that I'm kind of digging is looking into a cheap, beaten up Hori Neo to refurbish. They're not too pricey and seem to come in terrible condition most always. Someone here did a fantastic job bringing back a set in full style, beautiful work!

Just picked up this bad boy.

Just slapped in my Dictator ball top that Craig hooked me up with.

I like it, I've been eyeballing those for a while. Would have liked that better than my Hori Kais but I never actually owned that new NRAP shell and I just had to try it out. That still looks legit, love the symbol and simplicity. I'd plug them buttons yesterday.

Guts- pretty cool looking stick. I would throw a smoke bubble top, 6 smoke ps-14-kn buttons and either plug the other 2 holes or use solid black ps-14-gn buttons. Hows the weight of this stick compared to what other stick you use?

Electric- yeah the newer HRAP cases arent as good as the OG ones. My friend has one, at first It felt nice. But after awhile it just feels too light and not enough surface area. Im def happy with using the Hori T5 + brook universal board combination.

AJtheMishima said:

Guts- pretty cool looking stick. I would throw a smoke bubble top, 6 smoke ps-14-kn buttons and either plug the other 2 holes or use solid black ps-14-gn buttons. Hows the weight of this stick compared to what other stick you use?

Electric- yeah the newer HRAP cases arent as good as the OG ones. My friend has one, at first It felt nice. But after awhile it just feels too light and not enough surface area. Im def happy with using the Hori T5 + brook universal board combination.

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Weight is really good not to heavy not to light.

so I finally got a chance to throw the ls56 w/short throw mod into a hrap case and test it out on fightcade alittle over the weekend. Maybe i got to used to the heavy spring on the ls38, but im not liking as of now. But its my fault im trying to hit the corners hard when i should we doing smaller lighter motions. If i dont like it after acouple more weeks just gonna throw a brand new ls32 in there.

anyone know off hand the "safe" internal height for a custom case with sanwa stick and buttons?

I'm still rockin my Qanba Q3's and still really love this case, the all-wood enclosure feels so solid and doesn't give you that hollow plastic sound when hitting buttons. Plus the piano black finish is devilishly sexy. I recently updated the internals to fit a Jasen's Customs EZ version of Toodles' MC Cthulhu, replacing those crappy PS360+'s. I could never get the PS360+ to work with all the claimed supported consoles. One would work with the Saturn, the other wouldn't. Neither of them worked with NES. I got so fed up with Akishop's support, or lack of, constantly giving me the runaround. I'm so glad Brook has put them in their place. But I digress...

The MC Cthulhu EZ has the same PCB size as the Brook Universals and PS360+'s, so you can mount them on top of each other.
The Alternate hook-up pinout is the same as the Brook/PS360's as well, so I crimped a 20p connector as a bridge and just wire the buttons to one of the boards since they have passthrough continuity.




One stick has the Brook Uni installed, wired to a USB port, and the MC Cthulu is connected to an RJ45.
The other stick just has a MC right now, but am planning on getting another Brook later on.





Both sticks have a custom port plate I fashioned out of black acrylic, with mounted USB and RJ45 ports





All-in-all I'm very happy with this set-up, and I can now connect these sticks to PSX, PS2, Saturn, Gamecube, OG Xbox, TurboGrafx, NES, SNES, Xbone, X360, PS4, PS3, Wii U and PC.

I currently only have a NG Kidney Stick stock, the Street Fighter IV Arcade Stick for 360 and a Mayflash PC stick. Need to look at getting a pro stick.

Without count the old Neo Geo controller right now I only have the SNES Capcom's Power Stick Fighter from 25 years back.
Assuming I have to renew/update my sticks, I'm thinking to purchase a Hori ones for my AES and a Mad Catz Arcade Fightstick for PS3/PS4.

I have a Madkatz Brawl Stick whose stock parts I replaced with a Seimitsu LS-32 joystick and 6 SEIMITSU-LS-32-01 buttons.

I have some for most of my consoles.
I love the sega genesis and the Saturn original model although they are not micro switch, they work perfectly. And for the Neo geo I prefer the old model (I have 3 of them).

gtmartini said:

I have some for most of my consoles.View attachment 43020

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some of those look weird to me. i don't know, i always thought it looked like the Saturn stick and a lot of other ASCII sticks and such had hard plasticcy buttons. And whats with the steep angle and spacing/size difference between rows on those two front-most sticks??? No thanks!!

Sylvie said:

some of those look weird to me. i don't know, i always thought it looked like the Saturn stick and a lot of other ASCII sticks and such had hard plasticcy buttons. And whats with the steep angle and spacing/size difference between rows on those two front-most sticks??? No thanks!!

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The US Virtua Stick has that rubber membrane and, combined with the hollow plastic buttons, make it useless for anything but platformers IMO. That stick is trash.

Sylvie said:

some of those look weird to me. i don't know, i always thought it looked like the Saturn stick and a lot of other ASCII sticks and such had hard plasticcy buttons. And whats with the steep angle and spacing/size difference between rows on those two front-most sticks??? No thanks!!

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Those 2 are for Sega MD and for SNES, I really don't like the way they are placed and the button size either but they are better than SNES controller for fighting games. I like to use the arcade stick for fighting and games like Metal Slug, not for the other games. But I can't stand playing fighting with a normal controller.
The best I think is the Genesis, never had any problem with it, and the ball of the stick (man, this sounds wrong) is big and is even better than Neo Geo (that cracks) and I think is too small like most of the sticks. The gray one is for PS 1 and 2. It has microswitch but the stick is strange, I might change that for a ball. The saturn eclipse (on the right) is not so good, the buttons sticks a little and I improved that using Vaseline. But the Sega original e far better.

FilthyRear said:

The US Virtua Stick has that rubber membrane and, combined with the hollow plastic buttons, make it useless for anything but platformers IMO. That stick is trash.

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I don`t known why some people hate so much this stick, probably just because it is not micro switch and those who complain are used to arcade machines. I just played Virtual fighter and Street fighter to test it and see any flaws, but I think it is excellent. The rubber contact responds really well and kind of absorbs the movement. The concave buttons are good to centralize the finger and press always at the correct place. The separated turbo switch and the turbo speed are an extra. The stick is long and the big ball makes get precision on every move. It is heavier than the Neo Geo`s and the plastic finish fells great, the bottom is a sheet metal. I really don`t see any bad thing about it. All sega first parties controllers I have are great, third parties not so much...

the only first party Sega sticks I've been interested in are the JP Virtua Stick for Saturn, and the Dreamcast green goblin. Hard to say which one I'd buy first. Probably the Virtua Stick for the sake of having a 2nd stick for my Saturn. I haven't touched my Dreamcast in a long time.

gtmartini said:

I don`t known why some people hate so much this stick, probably just because it is not micro switch and those who complain are used to arcade machines. I just played Virtual fighter and Street fighter to test it and see any flaws, but I think it is excellent. The rubber contact responds really well and kind of absorbs the movement. The concave buttons are good to centralize the finger and press always at the correct place. The separated turbo switch and the turbo speed are an extra. The stick is long and the big ball makes get precision on every move. It is heavier than the Neo Geo`s and the plastic finish fells great, the bottom is a sheet metal. I really don`t see any bad thing about it. All sega first parties controllers I have are great, third parties not so much...

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Trash.