joysticks

[machino]

Hi everyone,ben reading alot here and i can say it's a very cool/nice site!
My question is the next one,I'm building my first mame cabinet,and i was wondering,what is the BEST joystick for Street Fighter games ? I bought a Mag-Stik from ultimarc (to give me an idea)
and to know where to drill the hole on my CP,but it's kind of weird,and it's pretty short if i can say it that way,I add to root my 3/4mdf and it still not enough  .......

[GregD]

That is really personal preference.  Most of the world class fighter players prefer the Japanese sticks like Sanwa and Seimitsu.  Americans seem to prefer bat tops like Happ Competitions or Il Eurostiks.  There are so many choices and it isn't like you can go to a store to try them out so you sort have to take a chance.  If youbare strictly going fighting games then I would say go with the Japanese sticks.  They come with different shaft lengths.  Look at the Sanwa JLW.

[mgb]

Like GregD said, it is a preference thing but I like the Happ / IL Competition sticks for fighters like that. They're 8-way only, not too clicky and they're cheap. The Happ Supers are also decent for those fighters, I believe the Supers are what would typically be in a street fighter back in the day.

[machino]

thanx 1000X! really appreciate

[Dawgz Rule]

The mag-stik has a short throw and if you are bottom mounting, it will seem like a really short stick.  I am not a hardcore fighter person and play a lot of variety so I went with the mag-stik plus and top mounted.  I like it a lot.  That being said, if you like the overall feel of the mag-stik, you can purchase a longer shaft. 

[rCadeGaming]

Sticks are an individual preference, but as mentioned above pro fighting game players use Japanese Sanwa and Seimitsu sticks almost exclusively.  I prefer a Sanwa JLF at the moment.  Fighting games are my favorite arcade genre, and in my opinion it is unnecessarily difficult to execute complex inputs using clunky American-style sticks.  This debate is already going on here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=118842.0

[paigeoliver]

The Street Fighter machines you remember playing would have all had Happ/iL joysticks in them. It seems like the Street Fighter 2 kit came with Happ supers as all the ones I owned had that stick and most of the others I have seen that hadn't been messed with had them as well.

That may not be the best stick for the game, but it is the one you most likely used and certainly works well with it. A lot of pro players prefer the japanese sticks, but that could also simply be because most pro players play on japanese machines.

[rCadeGaming]

Street Fighter cabinets in the US had Happ/iL sticks simply because it was cheaper to import the game board and put in an cabinet made here with American parts than to import the whole cabinet.  They made cabinets and kits with the least amount of imported parts because it's cheaper that way, not because of how well it plays.  

I would not agree that Happs/iL's work well for fighting games.

When I say pro players use Japanese parts I'm not just talking about Japanese people, I'm talking about all pro players, including Americans.  They didn't get to that skill level using just what was available or familiar, they looked at all the options and made an educated decision on what would work best.

[paigeoliver]

Happ's sticks are also imported. Most of them were produced by iL (Industrias Lorenzo) in their facility in Spain. That is why they are referred to as Happ/iL sticks. The specific joystick used in the Street Fighter series kits cost quite a bit more than most Japanese joysticks did (more than twice as much), so this was obviously not a cost based decision.

It was really a culture based decision. The frail japanese controls wouldn't have held up in an american gaming environment. Americans didn't show much respect to things like arcade games and would break the joystick handles right off. I can't tell you the number of classic era imported japanese cabinets (mostly cocktails and minis) I have encountered with broken sticks and buttons.

Pro players do prefer the japanese sticks, although that has to be recent, you couldn't even really get them here back when most of those games were current). You personally played the game with Happ Super joysticks. Which you want is up to you.

Street Fighter cabinets in the US had Happ/iL sticks simply because it was cheaper to import the game board and put in an cabinet made here with American parts than to import the whole cabinet.  They made cabinets and kits with the least amount of imported parts because it's cheaper that way, not because of how well it plays.  

I would not agree that Happs/iL's work well for fighting games.

When I say pro players use Japanese parts I'm not just talking about Japanese people, I'm talking about all pro players, including Americans.  They didn't get to that skill level using just what was available or familiar, they looked at all the options and made an educated decision on what would work best.

[MacGyver]

Before I bought my sticks I looked around, and read a lot of posts, but all I really wanted was for someone to tell me "If you like SSFII, then buy a xxx-x brand bat-top and if you are mounting it from the top, couter-sink it 1/4 inch, or if bottom mounting the plate should be 1/8 from the surface.  It will feel the same, just like you remembered." Same with buttons too.  (I know operators changed out a lot of things as they broke, so I'm just suggesting a starting point)

[frasermat]

I think you need the Sanwa joystick, but basically it all depends on your preferences 

[rCadeGaming]

Happ's sticks are also imported. Most of them were produced by iL (Industrias Lorenzo) in their facility in Spain. That is why they are referred to as Happ/iL sticks. The specific joystick used in the Street Fighter series kits cost quite a bit more than most Japanese joysticks did (more than twice as much), so this was obviously not a cost based decision.

I know that iL is a Spanish company and that they manufactured for Happ at some point, that's why buying an iL stick is now the way to get the quality of stick that Happ used to sell before they outsourced production to China.  However, for whoever was assembling the cabinets, buying something from an American company that outsources production is certainly different than importing from a foreign company.  To some extent this is semantics, but you called me out on the semantics.

I don't think I believe that Happ's iL produced sticks were more expensive than Japanese ones without seeing some evidence.  Japanese sticks are about twice as expensive iL sticks are right now.  I wouldn't think iL sticks would be more expensive when they had an agreement with an American company, so why would this be?  Exchange rates?

The frail japanese controls wouldn't have held up in an american gaming environment. Americans didn't show much respect to things like arcade games and would break the joystick handles right off. I can't tell you the number of classic era imported japanese cabinets (mostly cocktails and minis) I have encountered with broken sticks and buttons.

I totally agree that this was part of the decision though. 

I wouldn't go as far as calling them "frail," Japanese parts don't break down more if they're not misused; but like you said, it's a cultural thing, they were misused much more here.  Agreed, they're not as durable in that environment.

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As for the original question, since the original poster asked specifically about the best stick to play Street Fighter I'll put it like this: if you want a stick that will best allow you excel specifically in fighting games (and the stick WILL make a huge difference), get a Sanwa JLF.  It's the standard for serious competitive players.  If anyone tells you anything other than a Sanwa JLF or a Seimitsu, they are most likely not serious about competing in fighting games.

Stop setting up your panel for that Mag-Stick.  You don't have to get rid of it, it's good to have a parts bin with all kinds of things in it to try for different types of games.  You can route panel so that it will accept both a JLF and a Seimitsu.  Not hard, I can scan and post the mounting hole diagrams if you need them.

Get Sanwa buttons as well.  They're a little more smooth and sensitive than the Seimitsus and way better for fighting games than American-style buttons. 

Set everything up with a good button layout, and mount the stick so it the bottom of the ball top is about 23-24mm above the top of the control panel.