Newbie looking for joystick advice/help

[Carpjd76]

Hey all, have a new Multicade that was built for me.  Having lot of joystick control issues with many games as it’s very hard to control while playing PAC-Man, Zelda, etc.  is this because 8way vs 4way?  Also, finding that many games have Player 1 being controlled by the Player 2 joystick.  Tried switching the joystick USB’s, but doesn’t seem to help.  Any ideas?  Running Retropie if that makes a difference.  Thanks in advance

[Mike A]

Have you asked the guy who built it for you? He should have detailed information regarding its construction.

[Carpjd76]

I did ask him...he didn’t know, but was going to look into it.  Was just hoping someone may have experienced something similar

[Titchgamer]

What encoder are you using do you know?

[Mike A]

If it doesn't play right just return it. It is defective.

[Zebra]

It's been my experience that cheap and crappy joysticks sometimes have issues with diagonal movement. I notice it on one on one fighters as it makes it hard to jump forward. In that scenario I check the stick's contact with the micro switches and, if necessary, I replace the microswitches with decent ones.

There's not a lot more to a joystick than stick contact and working micro switches. If that's not the issue, you may just need time to get used to the joystick. People who are used to playing with joypads might find certain games harder with a stick.

The Pac Man arcade uses a 4 way joystick and it is slightly easier to play with the right kind of stick. But, I have no issues playing it with my regular 8 way fight stick. It's always a hard game though. Maybe you just need practice.

Try playing Street Fighter 2. If you can play that without issues, your joystick works.

[pumaconcolor]

There are a lot of 8-way sticks that don't play well with Pac-Man and other 4-way games, which is why you'll see a lot of solutions to this, including the over-engineered Servostik.  People are obsessed with having one joystick to rule them all.