Street Fighter IV Arcade Stick

[Tek7]

So I bought a Street Fighter IV Arcade Stick for $20. Elihu's friend owns a game store and gave me a crazy good deal for a birthday present.

I know it's not a Tournament Edition stick, but twenty dollars.

I'm playing with the idea of popping out the stock buttons and replacing them with SANWA buttons, but I can't get to SRK (it may be down at the moment?) to find an estimate on how much that would cost.

Thoughts? Kendrik?

 

[Kendrik]

SRK is down for the weekend. They're upgrading their site.

If you want parts, LizardLick Amusement is the best price on quality goods, or close to it, and has phenomenal service. Definitely order from them.

Based on my experience with a Standard Edition stick, I found that the stick itself needed more work than the buttons. I'd swap out that for a Sanwa (and you can buy one preconfigured for the MadCatz on LizardLick for about $20) and deal with the buttons when you feel the need to.

That's my take, anyway.

Stick is roughly $20. Buttons, I think, run either $3 or $4 a piece for Sanwa. Depending on how you like your sticks set up, you may prefer to buy six button and two button caps for the (then unused) button holes.

But LizardLick Amusements is definitely the place to go.

 

[Tek7]

Thank you for the expert insight, Kendrik.

I think I'll keep to the stock stick and buttons for now and replace them as my budget allows. First things first, though: I have to try it out!

I think I'll go boot up my PS3 before bed tonight and do exactly that...

 

[Tek7]

Well, I tested out my new (pre-owned) arcade stick last night and earlier today and I like it for the most part.

Unfortunately, the X button (light kick in SSFIV) is sporadically unresponsive. I opened up the unit, confirmed the wires are making contact. I also removed the button from the button case and there appears to be no mechanical issues.

/sigh

My gaming budget is locked down for a while (car repairs are expensive ), so I'll either have to suffer through the occasional unresponsiveness or find a free way to fix it.

A quick search confirms I'm not the only one to run into this issue. Unfortunately, none of the potential answers I found were all that insightful. Boo.

So I've posted over at SRK in hopes of finding an answer, but if you all have any expert advice, please do share.

 

[Kendrik]

Unfortunately, I don't have insight on this particular matter. You talked about swapping buttons to see if that helped responsiveness, and that's probably the best practical idea right now. Aside from that, waiting out for a response on SRK is the best best thing.

Best of luck!

 

[Tek7]

Two pieces of good news:

Swapping the X and L2 buttons seems to have resolved the issue. At this point, I'll stop using the L1 and L2 buttons for 3x Punch and 3x Kick and just press all 3 buttons for Ultra Combos. Probably a better way to train anyway. Now that I know the issue is with the button rather than the PCB or wire, I'll put a pack of 8 Sanwa buttons on my wish list and pick it up when funds allow (though I may drop some coin on a new joystick first; the stock stick is a bit clumsy at times).

And the second bit of good news: I beat the game on Medium as Chun Li! Yes, I've decided turn away from Juri and return to my first Street Fighter love.

 

[Kendrik]

Oh Chunners. She's one of the most difficult characters for me to get a handle on.

It's definitely a preference thing, but I had no purpose for 3xP/3xK buttons. Gotta hit 'em all.

Glad the button swap helped!

 

[Tek7]

Blarg. I can live with the buttons (well, at least the 7 that work properly), but this joystick is getting on my nerves. Its recognition of QCB (quarter circle back, the motion for a left-facing hadoken) and other motions is inconsistent.

It's going to be rough waiting to buy a Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT-SK joystick. But I'll persevere!

 

[Tek7]

It's going to be rough waiting to buy a Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT-SK joystick. But I'll persevere!

Huzzah! I didn't have to wait long!

I remembered I still had $20 in my personal Paypal account AND I received an e-mail alert that the joystick was back in stock today. I placed my order and I'm looking forward to replacing the crapulent stock joystick with the vastly superior JLF-TP-8YT-SK!

 

[Tek7]

And here's a photo of the finished product:



I splurged on a $3.95 clear Seimitsu bubble top and decided on a color scheme to match SSFIV's training mode input icons. I <3 how it turned out!

 

[Kendrik]

I forgot that you went with the button color scheme. I like that. It's neat.

Undead'd thread!

 

[Tek7]

I forgot that you went with the button color scheme. I like that. It's neat.

Thanks! I really like how it turned out. I think I'm going to drop the $17 on a disc copy of SSFIVAE while it's on sale on Amazon to finally have the "complete" game. I'll probably try to sell my copy of SSFIV for $10 if I buy SSFIVAE on disc.