Since not many people seem to use 49-way sticks I thought I would present my findings...
If you haven't already seen it, paige's 'first look' thread is a good read:
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=23393Also u_rebels 49-way page:
http://www.urebelscum.speedhost.com/49waySticks.htmlAnyway, I have just bought a Happ 49-way stick (
http://www.happcontrols.com/joysticks/a219391.htm ) and SJC interface (
http://dave.bit2000.com/ ). First impressive thing was I ordered the SJC after the stick, and received the SJC (all the way from the US to the UK) a week before the stick (Happ have a UK depot).
The stick itself has quite a nice feel to it, although it had a bit (1mm or so) of up/down movement (sloppy-ness) - this was a bit irritating. I placed a washer between the e-clip and the nylon spacer (had to trim this spacer slightly as the washer I had was a bit thick). No big deal but the stick does feel surprisingly improved by this.
The SJC board made interfacing a piece of cake. I used an old IDE ribbon cable as it fits on the 49-way connector quite well - probably the hardest thing about the whole install was picking the correct wires on the IDE cable (I took off the middle connector on the ribbon cable and traced the individual wires back to the pins)!
Once connected, I calibrated the stick in control panel, although it seemed to be OK anyway. Now onto the games...
8-way: the stick works well for 8-way games overall, I doubt you'd want to play fighters which use special moves (I could do a Haduken fairly well but not so hot at Shoryuken!) with it but for platform games, shooters etc. it works great.
4-way: again the stick works pretty well for 4-way games, but the usual problem associated with 8-ways playing 4-way games is apparent (ie diagonals). No worse that most 8-ways I have used tho. I used the stick for Snake Pit along with my trackball, and it works very well once you get used to it. Also I tried Sente's Off The Wall with my spinner, and course it worked great (only 2 way required for that one).
Analog: these are the games I most want to use this stick for, and for the most part I have not been disappointed. I got further than ever before on Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, S.T.U.N. Runner and Road Runner, and completed After Burner. On some games it is apparent that the resolution isn't as good as with a true analog stick (or yoke), which is to be expected really - Star Wars is one which suffers from this, it can be hard to get the crosshair in the right place at times. For the majority of games tho I didn't really notice the low resolution to be a problem.
49-way: I am not the best person to just these games really, as to my knowledge I have never played on a 'real' 49-way arcade machine. I also haven't played many 49-way games in MAME as yet...but I had a few goes on Sinistar, Blaster and Arch Rivals - they seemed to play just great.
One thing I should mention is that I have the scaling on the SJC board set to 'linear' - I think exponential may be preferred for some games, the Williams 49-way games presumably. I'll try this when I get chance...
So overall very impressed with both the stick and SJC board - a great alternative to an analog stick which I found are pretty difficult to find (particularly non-flight stick types).
Here's a pic of the back of the stick (you can see the washer I added here, and also the SJC):
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Topic: 49-way mini-review (Read 7273 times)
