I’m better at Street Fighter 4 than I was at SF2.  I have begun to feel the need to get a proper arcade stick.  As any seasoned fighting game fan knows, the preferred medium of play for most fighting games is the arcade stick.  D-pads on regular PS3 controllers will eventually leave your thumb sore and hands cramped.

As Street Fighter 4 finds its way into households all over the world, the more serious fans have bought up almost all of the joysticks available online and in local stores.  Now, most sticks are priced between 150% and 200% of the MSRP on e-bay and Amazon marketplace.  Most of the retailers and manufacturers were caught off-guard by the demand for these.

To celebrate the arrival of this game, Capcom teamed up with a company called MadCatz (who have a horrible reputation, actually, but apparently pulled a rabbit out of a hat this time) to make a tournament edition stick which would feature japanese parts and be of very high quality:

MadCatz TE SF4 Stick (xbox version pictured, PS3 version is identical)

This is quite a piece of kit and features Sanwa brand (arcades use these) buttons and japanese style ball joystick.  These parts are meant to take hours of abuse daily and are definitely the real deal.  But the TE joystick instantly sold out and is no longer available except on sites like e-bay for many times the original price.  Fortunately, there are other options.  In my research, I found another comparable stick that fans love, the Hori Real Arcade Pro 3:

Hori Real Arcade Pro 3

This stick doesn’t have the Sanwa buttons that the Madcatz above has, but it does have a Sanwa stick and solid build quality.  And, it doesn’t have the look of a specific game which is good because the stick can be used on PS3, PS2 and PS1 games as well as a PC via USB.  This stick is also sold out everywhere but today, for a very small window of time, Amazon had it in stock for the normal price.  So, I ordered it and should have it soon.  (It’s out of stock again now)

Unfortunately, it looks like McDonalds designed it.  The colors will have to go.

Realizing I was already down a nerdy path debating the pros and cons of various joysticks in my head, I found a reputable supplier of arcade parts, Lizard Lick.  They are backlogged due to the release of Street Fighter 4.  Sellers of original Sanwa parts for arcade machines, which also happen to fit into these joysticks, they have a good reputation with fans.  It’s possible to create any look you want by combining the parts, and you get better quality stuff this way (Sanwa buttons instead of Hori buttons) as well.  Here is one such creative mind on Flickr:

Modded HRAP 3 with Alternate Ball and Sanwa Buttons (Treaked on Flickr)

I intend to do something similar to this, but with a different button color combo.

You may think this is awfully far to go to purchase a joystick, but after a little research online, I found that the cheaper options really are not worth it.  There just aren’t good AND cheap controllers out there.  Many people break and/or have problems with sticks of lesser quality.  Even the Capcom/MadCatz endorsed “budget” sticks that came out for about half the price already have reports of cracking cases and the sticks not responding to input properly after a week or two of use.  So I’d rather do it once, and do it right.

So, there you have it.  A top quality arcade stick which can be personalized and repaired with real japanese arcade parts.  What madness drove me to go this far, I do not know.  But it is a fun project.  Thank you to my wife for putting up with this latest obsession and actually noticing the Amazon page briefly showing “in stock.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 5:38 PM and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.