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Ultimarc 360 Joysticks - my review
Dreamwriter:
I ordered a pair of Ultimarc 360's a couple months ago, shortly after they were released - I was building myself a fullsize arcade machine, and didn't want a Frankenpanel, so I figured the 360's one-size-fits-all stance sounded good. So I've had these for a while now. (later I decided to make a little desktop arcade machine instead, but that's another story).
First of all, I just love the feel of the joysticks. My best sticks before these was a pair of X-Arcades from an X-Arcade Duo, and comparing the two joysticks are like comparing Cadillacs to AMC Gremlins: no contest. I love the lack of a click, even the lack of feeling the sticks "lock into place". It's perfectly smooth movement all the way from edge to edge. I didn't get the stiffer springs, and I don't miss them - I can see if I played Sinistar a lot I might want the better fine control the stiffer spring might provide, but as it is they handle great for the games I play (though to be honest I *am* used to pushing very lightly on game-console analogue sticks to get true analogue control from them).
I've used the 360's in a lot of games: analogue, 2 way, 4 way, and 8 way, and they work great in all types. A few joystick games I play especially a lot are Star Wars, Terminator 2, Frogger, Ms. PacMan, Super Dodgeball, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Popeye, and they all control great with the 360's. Oh, and I did create my own map - I created a QBert layout, that only allowed diagonals and had them send the non-diagonals, so I could play Q-Bert as it was meant to be played without rotating the joystick; it was an easy and mostly intuitive process.
And finally, on the business side of things, I did have a couple issues that required support, one hardware problem and a (sort-of) software problem, and they were both handled very quickly and painlessly, especially the software problem, which was solved in just one day (today, in fact!) Andy's a great guy, and I'd definitely do business with him again.
In conclusion, I'd definitely recommend these sticks to anyone who wants an all-in-one solution. Sure, a 4-way limiter would make PacMan more accurate, and a rotated joystick would be more realistic for Q-bert. But if you don't have the space for that or want to deal with it (or the cost of buying all those joysticks), the Ultimarc 360's are the way to go.
leapinlew:
Cool - thanks for the review!
Can you compare them to any other controller you've used before?
For example:
Stiffness = about the same as ____ joystick
Throw = how many degrees? or similar to what stick?
How high does it sit off your control panel and what kind of CP do you have?
I know feel is very hard to capture and all I can compare it to is other joysticks so I'm really interested in how you thought it handled.
Dreamwriter:
Well, the only controllers I've used before are X-Arcade joysticks and console controllers, so you see my problem :) OK, I have used controllers in the arcade, but not enough to really be able to compare against them. As for what kind of CP I have, it's for my little bitty arcade machine - here's the newest prototype pic:
Texasmame:
--- Quote from: Dreamwriter on August 23, 2006, 01:01:20 am --- Oh, and I did create my own map - I created a QBert layout, that only allowed diagonals and had them send the non-diagonals, so I could play Q-Bert as it was meant to be played without rotating the joystick; it was an easy and mostly intuitive process.
--- End quote ---
Could you explain that a bit more in detail. . .
Dreamwriter:
Yeah, by default Mame's Q-Bert controls assume you've got a normal 4-way joystick rotated 45 degrees on the CP - the arcade did it that way. So that way, pressing diagonally down-right is actually pressing the "right" joystick switch. The mapping software for the Ultra-360's lets you set any joystick motion to return any direction, so I created a map that does that - I filled the diagonally down-right squares to return a joystick-right signal, down-left squares to return a joystick-down signal, etc. So when I want to play Q-bert, I load that map up, and it controls perfectly.
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