I'm with you on keeping your sticks straight, hhscott. I'll elaborate:
As far as that argument with with the X++X 4 player I dont get it, when the 3 and 4 players are angled its not like there pushing sideways to walk up, there standing on the very angle of the stick so its up in there direction not up at the monitor, It feels perfectly normal when playing on a X++X pattern and theres nothing wrong with setting it up that way unless you want a 5 1/2 foot long control panel for 4 men to stand comfortably.
A good number of people jumping on the 4-player CP train seem to think angling them is the way to go. If you're going to angle controls, your best bet would be to cut the front edge to be parallel with the way the controls are laid out. (like so: \____/). Otherwise, it's going to throw quite a few people off. Are you going to assume the outside players are going to stand at the correct angle so that up is relative to them? What if they're off a few degrees? Will they start complaining loudly that your "machine is broken"? And do you think the average person looks at joystick bolts or arrows on a CPO?
Here's the problem as I see it: When you angle your controls, you are essentially "forcing" people to stand a certain way. If they're off even an inch either way, "up" is relative to some seemingly random, imaginary line.
There's strong debate on this but at least a couple of people who angled their sticks, I've found, seem to regret doing it. Why? Up is intuitively towards the screen (no confusion there). Look at real control panels that accommodate more than two players. The
buttons are angled (or arranged differently), but the joystick is usually situated in all the same directions. The few exceptions I've seen don't have rectangular CPs. Remember that 4-players game don't require sophisticated joystick movement (unlike, say, SFII), so there's no reason that you need the buttons to even be directly to the right of them (see NBA Jam, Gauntlet, etc.). Put the buttons to the upper-right of the joystick, for example. Speaking of Gauntlet: I actually remember standing to the left of the machine to play using Thor and it worked out just fine (up was towards the screen, of course).
Secondly, if your sticks are all straight (++++), you've got the perfect setup for two-player Smash TV and Total Carnage, as scotthh pointed out.
Now a quick word on comfort, since this goes hand-in-hand with angling joysticks: If you're primary concern is being comfortable (with regards to proximity of other people), a standard arcade cabinet control panel is not for you. Even with a lot of two-player games, you have to give up a reasonable amount of your personal space (or have a ridiculously wide, out-of-proportion CP). If you want everyone to be far apart, you either should think about building a showcase cab with a huge screen or rig up some recliners with arcade controls (I saw this at Gameworks once - looked cool!)
More Reading on this topic for both sides of the argument:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=53415.0(EDIT: I just realized scotthh provided the same link - so this is redundant but I'll leave it since it was quite helpful and it's almost required reading for people on the fence)
BTW: where are your coin buttons?
Maybe he has a coin door?