qustion about joysticks and ultrastik 360

[shateredsoul]

I'm going to have playstation 2, gamecube, and n64 games on my console.  I want to use my arcade sticks (8 way competition happ) with some of those  games (1 on 1 fighting games, smash bros. sgames, and shmups), do I need a ultrastick 360? Most fighters didn't really make use of the analog functions, so I don't see why I would need anything else. 

I wanted to check to see if anyone here might know or have suggestions about this.

[kegger]

The biggest advantage of U360's are the fact that they can be mapped to be a 2,4,8 & analog joystick working with a whole bunch of games. The custom mapping that they are capable of, you can make the joystick pretty much do what ever you want.

Most emulators support keyboard controls so with an encoder your Happ's will work but
you will be stuck in lets say 8 way for a 4way game which could make some issues unless you use some type of restriction on the joystick. It boils down to preference.
I use the U360's and love them but their are advantages to both types. There are plenty posts about which joystick to go with just do some searches here

[markronz]

Sorry to piggy back a question onto this post, but it seems related.

Sounds like in MAME it's easy to customize the mapping of U360's to 2, 4, 8 or analog.    With other emulators, is it the same way?  Could I assign custom configs for other emulators for the U360's as well?   Or is that function only possible for MAME?

And the U360's show up as a gamepad on the computer right?  Not a keyboard?   So whatever other emulators I was using would also have to be able to map controls to gamepads then (and not just keyboards)?

[kegger]

You can change the maps to match other emulators but there is a catch.
The U360's can be wired 2 different ways. You can hook them up to an encoder and they will function just like a regular switch type joystick or hook them up the other way and run buttons off them and they become analog joysticks. This is the way I use them and I only use emulators that have  joystick support. Then I use a front end for all my emulators which will pass on the mapping info for the emulator. Fe's like Mala, Hyperspin, Maximus Arcade, Mamewah, Game EX and others support U360's and mapping. And you are correct it woulfd show up as a game pad or joystick but not a keyboard. Have a look here for all the U360's can and can't do

http://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_inst.html
It will show you the different ways they can be setup.

Current versions of Mame will handle the mapping to the U360's but other emulators don't and you would have to pass that mapping on for a particular emulator.
In the mame ini there is a setting for joystick mapping: "joystick_map   auto"

Good Luck