Joystick and spinner, or spinning joystick?

[Vertekal]

no0b here  

I'm glad I've found this site .. it's been a great wealth of information. I started messing around with MAME and other emu's quite a while ago, and have recently rediscovered MAME. I got the bright idea to build a standup cabinet and searched a bit for ideas, and had no clue so many people were also doing this  

Anyway, I'm going to build a 2 player cabinet, and would like to hear people's opinions on having a seperate joystick and spinner for each player, or just 2 spinning joysticks. The only bad thing I can think of about a spinning joystick is when playing a game that doesn't support the spinning. The good thing about a spinning joystick is that it takes up less space than a seperate spinner.

[Civilan]

Well I'm just ahead of you on the learning curve.

My control panel design will feature both rotary joysticks and spinners (eventually - cost is high). I was told that rotary joysticks don't freely rotate like a spinner does and some games will suffer if you can't just give the control a spin and have it keep spinning. Tempest is a good example of this.

Also, there's two kinds of rotary joysticks, mechanical with 12 positions, and optical. The mechanical joysticks click as they turn. Mechanical joysticks would definately not work well as a spinner.

Cheers,
Civilan

[Vertekal]

It's ok if it doesn't rotate freely .. I'm really only concerned about games such as Heavy Barrel, where you need to be able to rotate your character 360^o as well as standard 8 direction movement.

At some point I would probably add a normal spinner then, if the need would arise.

[Tiger-Heli]

no0b here  
The only bad thing I can think of about a spinning joystick is when playing a game that doesn't support the spinning.

This is not a problem, as a standard joystick shaft is free to rotate also.

However, there are 3 different types of rotary joysticks.  See this page for details
http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/faq.htm#The Rotary Joysticks you mention are not available yet and I want to play IKARI! What should I do?

Also, www.oscarcontrols.com sells a gutted USB mouse that would work with the optical rotaries for $9.