I'm going to be starting on my second cabinet pretty soon, which is a vertical monitor Ikari Warriors. I'm going to pretty much leave the control layout as-is, except that I want to add a 4-way joystick in the middle of the cabinet for all those 4-way vertical games out there. I really don't feel like redoing the entire panel (I did that on my first cabinet), and would like to just drop a joystick in the middle of the panel.
If I had the room, I would get one of those Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga joysticks, but the footprint (according to the exploded view on the Happ website) is 3.6"x3.15". I don't actually have my cabinet in my possession yet, so I can't measure it at this time, but looking at pictures, it seems that the only joystick I'm going to be able to mount in the space is a miniature or sub-miniature compact joystick. The footprint on the sub-miniature is really small (something around 1.6"x1.6"), so I'm pretty sure I could fit one of those in there.
My main question is, do I want one of these joysticks? First, I'm not sure how the feel of it will be. Of course, with it being a bit smaller than a regular joystick, I'm expecting some type of sacrifice to be made for the feel of it versus a regular joystick. The main thing that concerns me about this joystick is the quality of the switches. All of the other Happ joysticks seem to use Microswitches which they list as tested to 10 million cycles (I wouldn't want to be the guy who had to confirm that one). However, the compact joysticks don't say that, which leads me to believe they use a different kind of microswitch. I'm just not sure what the quality would be on this joystick. I am just planning on using it for (gentle) home play - no kids should be using it as a hand-hold to climb up the cabinet. However, I'm just not sure if I would be happy with it overall.
If there's anyone who's had experience with one of these joysticks, please let me know.
As an aside, I'm planning on keeping the rotating Ikari Warrior joysticks that are on it. Does anyone know if Druin's interface for rotary joysticks is still available? The only links I can find go to a dead site.
Thank you.
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Topic: Anyone use the Happ Compact Joysticks? (Read 1116 times)
