My joystick design cleared Hori USA hurdle

[tripletopper]

I guess this is the most general place to post general news about controllers.  It's not specific to one system, one company,  or one era.

 

If you search my username, you'll hear me talk about my joystick, or if you visit my website sinisterstick.com

 

A few months ago Hori USA said they love the design they think it would sell well in America but there was no way the main Japanese office would accept it.

 

Thanks to advice from a few guys on Atari Age, I should try to figure out if if a the poison pill that killed it automatically in Japan is right-stick and B if it is not that sort of poison pill, what would make it accepted in Hori of Japan's eyes?  In other words is there some deeper or better way to get such a thing made.

 

I discussed how the main reason there were no such thing as Ambi sticks were the economics of Ambi sticks and I believe I've solved at least 90% of the problems associated with either an ambidextrous joysticks the way they were at the time , or having separate left and right handed models.  I told him I understood why the Second Golden Rule is the reason why most joysticks are left-handed, (the arcade owner pays the bills and they want to minimize time on each quarter.). However the consumer is more of the boss than the arcade owner is on home joysticks.

 

Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and then the manager at Hori USA said I am correct, that I solved 90% of the problems of separate left and right models as well as an ambidextrous model relying on the Beeshu mirroring tactic.  Twice as much wire is a lot cheaper than twice as many buttons.

 

So this is what he told me.  Some things have a certain deadline like the Xbox Series joysticks the PS5 joysticks and any joysticks based on a particular title that have a vanity stick for it.  But he said, sometime, when there's a gap between vanity sticks, he'll send it to Hori of Japan.

 

I understand it is not the final hurdle, but I'm not eliminated from the race yet.

[jerseystyle]

On 5/29/2021 at 1:32 PM, tripletopper said:

I guess this is the most general place to post general news about controllers.  It's not specific to one system, one company,  or one era.

 

If you search my username, you'll hear me talk about my joystick, or if you visit my website sinisterstick.com

 

A few months ago Hori USA said they love the design they think it would sell well in America but there was no way the main Japanese office would accept it.

 

Thanks to advice from a few guys on Atari Age, I should try to figure out if if a the poison pill that killed it automatically in Japan is right-stick and B if it is not that sort of poison pill, what would make it accepted in Hori of Japan's eyes?  In other words is there some deeper or better way to get such a thing made.

 

I discussed how the main reason there were no such thing as Ambi sticks were the economics of Ambi sticks and I believe I've solved at least 90% of the problems associated with either an ambidextrous joysticks the way they were at the time , or having separate left and right handed models.  I told him I understood why the Second Golden Rule is the reason why most joysticks are left-handed, (the arcade owner pays the bills and they want to minimize time on each quarter.). However the consumer is more of the boss than the arcade owner is on home joysticks.

 

Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and then the manager at Hori USA said I am correct, that I solved 90% of the problems of separate left and right models as well as an ambidextrous model relying on the Beeshu mirroring tactic.  Twice as much wire is a lot cheaper than twice as many buttons.

 

So this is what he told me.  Some things have a certain deadline like the Xbox Series joysticks the PS5 joysticks and any joysticks based on a particular title that have a vanity stick for it.  But he said, sometime, when there's a gap between vanity sticks, he'll send it to Hori of Japan.

 

 

I understand it is not the final hurdle, but I'm not eliminated from the race yet.

Have you removed the really weird “stalking and harassment of a six year old neighbor” story from your website, or is Hori down with child abuse?

[Cebus Capucinis]

 

 

Wait, nope. Found it. WHY. WHY. WHY.

 

[Draxxon]

[Draxxon]

I can give some thoughts, but Im not sugarcoating shit.

 

Its good you have a working prototype to show, and not just an idea alone. Careful who you show stuff too, someone can just take your idea. BTW its been done before, it doesnt sell well. FGC isnt looking for an ambidextrous stick. People have played SF, KOF, Tekken, etc on a left handed sticks this whole time, they arent going to want to switch. People go to pads and hitboxes, but that is it. And Hori was wrong, Japan and the US both will not want this stick for fighting games. (while the sticks did switch for easy access to pockets and quarters, dont forget the button count went for 0~1 to 6. People "dial" with the right hand, that is also part of it.)

I suppose Old School Arcade and casual gamers, or even Left Handed people may want it. I would focus on those people and less on HORI and the FGC. I think coming to Atari Age was a step in the right direction. Right now you have a handmade custom arcade stick with a gimmick, But I have to wonder how many people want this gimmick, I would say very very few.

 

My advice is get with someone to redesign that website, shit, rebrand the stick all together, and design a nicer than your prototype joystick and try and sell them yourself. or better yet, figure out how to perform the mod on an existing stick and just provide that service, but, youll have to solve the problem of the start button. One on top and one, in the way, on bottom is a no go. put them on the sides like flipper for pinball, and then you can play pinball too.

 

Also realize how easy it is for some to make a dedicated right hand joystick these days. You really wouldnt want a compromised stick to switch L to R on the fly. You'll want one or the other.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Draxxon

[tripletopper]

Hello.

 

First of all, I live on Social Security and Medicaid.  Unless I can make enough to beat my  "sure money" income and still afford healthcare for the rest of my life if I were to "coast on the payout", the fact that an Ambi stick is available off the shelf is more important and valuable to me than me making money off of it.

 

Second, my website is the best I can do with a social security income.

 

Yes, the main appeal to fighters would have been in the SF2 era, where a right stick would give enough people an advantage in pulling off dragon punches.  As I said, intermediate and higher fighters with thousands of hours of practice would probably not want to relearn things unless it gave them an edge.  That's why one way to market it is an off the shelf first, beginner's stick, as in when you're not sure whether you want a left handed or right handed stick. 

 

Thank you for saying there is more to joysticks than just fighters, Schmups and maze games are 2 big genres where joysticks are better. Actually by default, I prefer joystick over pad for about everything unless there is a specific reason I need an analog control. Also speed runners prefer digital controls to analog ones for easy repeatability.

 

In one sense, it is 2 sticks in one, a lefty and a righty, just not both at the same time.  If you want a left stick for certain games and a right stick for certain other others, this would be handy.  You can easily switch between the 2.  But it is not 2 simultaneous joysticks in 1.  Besides having 2 in 1 in that sense would ruin the joystick, forcing both people to go left stick or right stick together, instead of making them independent 

 

BTW Hori is a video game  controller and accessory company who happens to make something the fight game community finds priceless.  They are not primarily an FGC cultural company and one of their products is a fight stick.  The American division saw lots of value in an easy to ambidextrize joystick.  

 

Also I designed it so you do not have to be a solder surgeon or spend big bucks for a custom to a decent joystick.

 

Also a problem NOT compensated for in the joystick you showed was that, depending on the game, mirror mapping may be different.  For a 2 button game, there are 2 choices:

index to index:

AB J BA

which is what most games use, which is the reason why I disliked the Sega SMS Joystick (it followed the below mapping) 

and left-to-left

AB J AB

which is usually only handy when the "action" is directed in one of 2 ways, like in Tutankham and Side Arms, firing left and firing right.

 

Do the buttons shift to an index-to-index mapping, or is this fixed:

 

WXYZ

ABCD

 

and not able to turn to:

 

ZYXW

DCBA

 

 

When you got 6 buttons and many different design theories about button placements, the ability to swap button arrangements comes in handy.

 

I understand the Xbox One and Series  and Nintendo  Switch, (as well as the PS4 and PS4 I assume, but don't know due to lack of personal experience) all have remappable controls, though there are a couple of flaws.  Xbox's being analog inflexibility on "all digital" games, and Nintendo's flaw being always assuming you want movement on the left to the point of making Link, a canonically sword-left handed character into a sword-right one, (at least for Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword,) despite the fact the Wiimote and Nunchuk are "naturally Ambidexterous".

 

This stick is also to make up for previous formats which didn't have joystick. Let alone joystick hand options.  With the N64 and Wii Classic having few stick peripherals and no Cthulhu or Brook Retro support, this may come in handy.

 

Thanks for the advice.  I knew most of the people who appreciate it are in the Atari Age audience.  That's why I discussed it on AA and shoryuken.com simultaneously.

 

Also Schmup-playing people are using their right index finger as an over-glorifed brick.  (90%+ of modern vertical/horizontal  shooters have neither an incentive to hold your fire  nor the requirement of testing your rapid fire finger)

 

Finally, since you've been to my website, you might have seen my claim that not only I but 4 other common friends went from losing to him (one person loses 2 out of 3 matches, the other 3 plus me were blanked by him). to NEVER losing to him.  4 people went from zero to hero.  And the only difference was the right hand stick.  We even tested a left hand stick, and only one person improved from 1/3 wins to 2/3 wins, everyone else was zeroed. The right hand stick was the key...

 

...but then again, we were playing the  Genesis version of Street Fighter: New Challengers, which has less leniency on the joystick special manuvers than later Capcom games, along with more punishing specials, and small, accidental combos instead of large,  engineered ones.  It makes sense that a natural right hander might prefer a right stick in this case if no muscle memory was attributed to them.

 

By the way, two things kept that model from selling better.  One is the fact that it was not for every system but was just PS3 where the regions where ambidexterity would have done well prefer Xbox for Street Fighter over PlayStation, two is it was not authorized by any console maker, and for new systems that means warranty hell if your system ever needs repair.

 

I think I have correctly identifies and solved the economics of fight stick ambidexterity, mainly through living life with arcades and home systems.  All I know is I got a custom fight stick not because I wanted  a cool bling stick, or to microimprove small details.   It was to fix a fundamental flaw in the market that couldn't be satisfied by the "big players".  Well Hori USA said my design solved the economic issues of a mass market off-the-shelf right stick. Thought making all lefty is a better market that trying to predict the left vs right ratio, and have surpluses of one type and shortages of the other if they guess wrong, all ambi sticks is better than all lefty sticks assuming all other factors are equal.  Hori USA said the gains that are made in making profitable ambis is greater than  the loss due to slight contour differences and inefficiencies. 

 

[Draxxon]

Ill say this, if a right handed stick was better for FGC, it would be easy to make and people would use them. You'll see hitboxes out there, for the short hop jumps and as you were saying, repeatability. Again there are almost no hand over hand players or people using a right stick. And those are the people buying joysticks, the FGC. Just saying. It's a bad idea. Not in the sense of a ambi stick in general, but mass producing and selling them.

 

Im 43 years old, Ive been playing fighting games since they were a thing... No one is asking/wanting a ambi stick in 30 years. Why would they want to switch now? You're 3 decades late to try and get people to switch back.

IDK if thats a start button at the bottom of the stick in the way. If you accidentally pause you lose the round in most tournaments. that button has to go. This is my best advice buddy. Not trying to be an asshole or negative nancy, just trying to help.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Draxxon

[tripletopper]

I swear I had my best gaming mojo with a right stick.

 

The biggest exception is Simpsons Arcade, where I had so much muscle memory I felt handcuffed with a right stick at home on the 360.  I have the Twin Galaxies Arcade Single Player Single Credit record for Simpsons.

 

But then again there weren't complicated moves you had to be precise on on the Simpsons.  The most precision move was Jump + Attack either together or one slightly after the other.

 

The reason why it's Ambidexterous is so that it can just as easily be left handed as it is right handed.

 

The only economically smart way to make both left hand and right hand joysticks without forcing a prediction that could result in shortages and surpluses and eBay hoarding and bargain basement purchases is Ambidexterity.

 

More "first sales" will happen if all joysticks are just as easily left and right handed.  Hori only makes money off wholesale directly and "first sales indirectly".

 

If the button arrangement loses more sales than ambidexterity gains, then it makes economic sense not to go Ambi.

 

However the custom market and the pick up and play market are 2 different markets.  The first is more likely to tinker.  The second is more likely to just skip something they don't like it.  The Sinister Stick makes sense for the pick up and play market.  

 

When you and 4 other people succeeded when they failed before, and the only difference was a right stick, and that feat was going perfect again the best player in your neighborhood, who later appeared on 00s era TV playing video games, that is a pretty high mountain to climb, and if 5 out of 5 improved, then it is more likely that 800 out of 1000 will improve vs 200 out of 1000, unless a lurking variable can be pointed out that us 5 have, that none of the other 995 have.

 

Some people prefer straight 6s.  A couple manufacturers make Straight 6s.  The SF15 stick is a Straight 8.  Why is straight 8 a "market satisfied option" and not ambidexterity.

 

Also the fact that Nintendo disqualified Beeshu in the NES days until they got a TG16 and Genesis license, despite most experts saying they are great sticks, even left handed, yet Nintendo made hands free controllers for hospitals make me wonder why they make an Uber niche hands free stick,  but don't allow an Ambi license until the competition did.

[jerseystyle]

9 minutes ago, tripletopper said:

I swear I had my best gaming mojo with a right stick.

 

The biggest exception is Simpsons Arcade, where I had so much muscle memory I felt handcuffed with a right stick at home on the 360.  I have the Twin Galaxies Arcade Single Player Single Credit record for Simpsons.

 

But then again there weren't complicated moves you had to be precise on on the Simpsons.  The most precision move was Jump + Attack either together or one slightly after the other.

 

The reason why it's Ambidexterous is so that it can just as easily be left handed as it is right handed.

 

The only economically smart way to make both left hand and right hand joysticks without forcing a prediction that could result in shortages and surpluses and eBay hoarding and bargain basement purchases is Ambidexterity.

 

More "first sales" will happen if all joysticks are just as easily left and right handed.  Hori only makes money off wholesale directly and "first sales indirectly".

 

If the button arrangement loses more sales than ambidexterity gains, then it makes economic sense not to go Ambi.

 

However the custom market and the pick up and play market are 2 different markets.  The first is more likely to tinker.  The second is more likely to just skip something they don't like it.  The Sinister Stick makes sense for the pick up and play market.  

 

When you and 4 other people succeeded when they failed before, and the only difference was a right stick, and that feat was going perfect again the best player in your neighborhood, who later appeared on 00s era TV playing video games, that is a pretty high mountain to climb, and if 5 out of 5 improved, then it is more likely that 800 out of 1000 will improve vs 200 out of 1000, unless a lurking variable can be pointed out that us 5 have, that none of the other 995 have.

 

Some people prefer straight 6s.  A couple manufacturers make Straight 6s.  The SF15 stick is a Straight 8.  Why is straight 8 a "market satisfied option" and not ambidexterity.

 

Also the fact that Nintendo disqualified Beeshu in the NES days until they got a TG16 and Genesis license, despite most experts saying they are great sticks, even left handed, yet Nintendo made hands free controllers for hospitals make me wonder why they make an Uber niche hands free stick,  but don't allow an Ambi license until the competition did.

Have you uploaded a picture of your controller?  

[tripletopper]

You can look on my own website, sinistersticks.com. Of course I can make it easy for you and upload a stick pic.  

 

I understand the plain Jane look is not exactly a great salesmanship.  But the reason why it's a plain Jane look is to emphasize what it does have,  which is reasonably contoured ambidexterity that could be either used as a near noir or straight six.

 

I've never been the best looking guy but I just been me and in high school lots of ladies like me, not enough for anyone kissed me but, I was the new guy in school and all the ladies seem to already have boyfriends.  I was just biding my time being me.

 

So this doesn't have a picture of a famous fighter or fighting game scene.  I paid the money to get what counts actually done and that is right-handed joystick.  But if it was going to be right-handed anyway I thought might as well make it a prototype to make a good ambidextrous style stick.

 

The main thing to look at is the arrangement of main attack buttons and the joystick how they are horizontal flips of each other if you 180 the joystick.  The quick attacks are slightly lower just like a noir.  The back three are in line like a straight six.  And most importantly both left-handed and right-handed are treated exactly the same way relative to the mirror flip.

 

I also have an easy wire set where you just plug in a db37 cable to whatever and you define the back end as and the buttons are wired accordingly. It'll follow the basic Capcom arrangements for both left-handed and right-handed assuming right-handed attack buttons are index to index mapped with left-handed ones, meaning quick attacks on index finger middle attacks on middle finger heavy attacks on ring finger and special attacks on pinky finger.

[Draxxon]

59 minutes ago, tripletopper said:

When you and 4 other people succeeded when they failed before, and the only difference was a right stick, and that feat was going perfect again the best player in your neighborhood, who later appeared on 00s era TV playing video games, that is a pretty high mountain to climb, and if 5 out of 5 improved, then it is more likely that 800 out of 1000 will improve vs 200 out of 1000, unless a lurking variable can be pointed out that us 5 have, that none of the other 995 have.

 

 

No way a handful of sega SF2 matches tells you any of that info.

the button layout is nothing special. nothing new. Start Button on bottom and top need to go bye-bye.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Draxxon

[jerseystyle]

Isn’t that the same as the picture that had been posted? What’s the difference between your model and:

 

[tripletopper]

1 hour ago, Draxxon said:

No way a handful of sega SF2 matches tells you any of that info.

the button layout is nothing special. nothing new. Start Button on bottom and top need to go bye-bye.

First of all most of my problems in Street Fighter 2 were failure to execute, and not flaws in strategy.  When you go from consistently losing to everyone to consistently beating everyone, then you could say that that was the difference.

 

Also when you succeed and executing and it becomes second nature then you could concentrate on more the other stuff like watching your opponents spacing managing clock and energy noticing attack patterns of your opponent.  But when you're trying to execute in a situation that's not conducive to executing IE wrong handed, you either just cannot pull one off on the spot or you take so focused of an approach that it's telegraphed and blocked or countered.

 

Also Street Fighter 2 is the perfect game for this setup.  I saw some posts mocking Street Fighter 4 for having very loosey-goosey controls and then unintended extra long combos were made out of them.  The Street Fighter 2 controls were easy enough that if you practice they were easy to execute but hard enough that you have to execute them right and cannot be loosey-goosey about them.

 

Yes it's true when you get to games with looser controllers then the joystick doesn't matter as much then there's no reason to put your "good hand" on the joystick.  If you've never played a version of Street Fighter 2 that was local, then you possibly cannot understand this, at least not by personal experience.  Also if combos are shorter and vanilla hits are weak compared to specials then there's no good reason to put your good hand on the buttons.

 

Left-handed joysticks were designed in 1985 when American arcade owners noticed that their time per credit went down when the left fire button for right-handed joystick was out of order.  Some owners were known to move the left fire button to the right to force left-handed play.  And credit lengths went down because less people were used to it by default.

 

The main point is the second Golden Rule says whoever has the gold makes the rules.  Who are the most direct consumers of arcade video game makers?  The machine owners who put it on streets and Hope average people plunk in quarters.  The quarter plunkers themselves are not the primary customers of arcade video game makers.  Before when most two player games were either co-op or alternating owners had instead of to shorten lengths of play and forcing left stick with one way to do that.  That's because they were paid by the three lives not by the Champions they produce.  Trust me if there was an organized Street Fighter 2 tournament, where the arcade owner got 10% of the arcade-versus-arcade play prize  money made, and each individual place decided what they were going to use for their setup, there would be no way in hell they turn down right handed players who prefer right handed joysticks.  By either shutting out or handcuffing 90% of the players that would plunk in quarters and apply to be that arcade's champion, assuming most of the money was made by the arcade champion and the owner got a cut that would not be the way to make your pool of possible contestants to recruit from bigger.

 

If you were in the high school and didn't have the opposite handed baseball gloves or golf clubs or hockey sticks you would be considered discriminating.

 

There was a long righty waiting line in miniature golf courses in the 70s and 80s and then golf courses became more efficient since the ambidextrous putter was introduced.  After that it made the long line get shorter but still just as many people played therefore encouraging more traffic, and there may be an instance where you want to switch hands and instead of walking up to the clubhouse to get the opposite handed Club for one shot you just flip it around.  The only alternative to an opposite handed shots would be making an acrobatic percarious shot.

 

It was just a strange artifact from a time when Jamma was heavily about limiting play time on the machine because the less time per quarter the more quarters get plunked.

 

Let's say classic video games became a high school sport. The reason why you want to make it classic video games not modern video games is that the scholastic scene should not influenced by the business scene of the current day version of the game.  Street Fighter 2 would definitely be among the classics.  It's been around long enough to have established standards.  The primary reason why Lefty sticks were instituted was because the companies were making money.

 

Yes it's easy to say in 2008 just go to shoryuken.com and find a custom joystick maker, but in 1994 finding someone who could make a Genesis and SNES joystick that is right handed was a lot harder to come by.  Ironically enough the only company that could do it was a company that makes handicapped gaming equipment known as KY Enterprises.  Their builds were good enough because they assumed that if you were handicapped you had a technician on call to handle some of the electronics that breaks down with the tools, and it was assumed you got either a partial subsidy from the government or from insurance company or something like that.

 

For the average person (if you define the average person as not a typical KY Enterprise's client, meaning that you're not handicapped but you need a special something) KY Enterprises made shoddy joysticks.  It broke down in a week or two.  Fixing required soldering and there was no one I knew who could help with that.  I would have had to take it to an mechanic but a mechanic wouldn't touch anything that is not Factory authorized.  Something that was basically Jerryrigging custom made, the mechanic basically says sucks to be you unless you got enough money that the government is subsidizing it.

 

I know I never made to competing beyond friends cuz I knew that if I were to go anywhere beyond my friends either it would be physically impossible for a right stick to be welcomed in an arcade or else there'd be less friendliness if I just beat them with the right handed stick and they said they didn't have the option to get one.

 

If the Golden Rule says he who has the gold makes the rules, then what would happen if one did have the opportunity to buy a right-handed stick or an ambidextrous stick?  Beeshu did carve  out that niche and actually did better than any unauthorized joystick maker should do with Nintendo's crackdown on unauthorized equipment. They did have a guarantee better scores or your money back policy.  I don't know what the take back rate is but I certainly had better scores with a Beeshu mainly because of the ambidexterity.

 

Beeshu was successful until the number buttons that had to be mirrored on both sides became too expensive to offer ambidexterity.  This design is to offer ambidexterity with less buttons.

 

I saw the specific market problem: how to make an ambidextrous joystick competitive with a unidexterous joystick, without requiring the super hard study to figure out what percentage of the game buying market wants to stick right versus stick left.

 

And I think I solved it better than anyone has before.

 

Just so you can walk a mile in another man's shoe even if you could reverse the button functions  on the modern operating systems controller config.  You still won't get a comfortable contour.  Your attack hand would be back cocked.  The quick punch would be too far away from your left index finger.  

 

[tripletopper]

1 hour ago, jerseystyle said:

Isn’t that the same as the picture that had been posted? What’s the difference between your model and:

 

1a. That is a straight 8 arrangement with two halves of a joystick that are assembly side by side.  If you prefer a noir layout, see above comments about 180-ing  a stick

1a is that compartment is not that sturdy then you might have loose parts when trying to ambidextrize it.

2. That model is not authorized for use with any system therefore the casual pick up and play player might ignore it out of fear of invalidating the warranty.

3a.  What happens when you do convert it to a right-handed joystick either by inverting it or swapping out the left and right?  Will it automatically make a correct index to index mapping of a street fighter stick or are you going to have to hope that there are either in game controller settings or os controller settings?

3b. Not every game is as simple as an index to index map.  2 non fighting games mainly a 2d maze shooter and a schmup respectively called Tutankham and Sidearms will have its buttons reversed if it behaves like it should with Street Fighter 2.

4. That is a PlayStation 3 controller and in my house the PlayStation 3 is basically the old 3D Blu-ray player that occasionally plays a couple games.  I played Street Fighter on the 360.

5. My controller could be recycled over and over to other consoles.  I've gone so far as have my connection be a db37 to have 37 analog electric pins so that it would work with a ColecoVision in any possible combination of buttons and functions where each function is given a unique ground.  Yes there are two different grounds on the Edladdin board on the ColecoVision.

 

Probably the most relevant ones to why it failed on the PS3 markets are reasons number 1 2 3.  Four and five are just my personal reasons that are not that popular.

 

By the way if you say it was no big deal to make an ambidextrous design then why haven't other people done it in my fashion if that was already in the air.  The only possible reason I could think of is a polo attitude on the part of the fighting game community.

 

First of all if you were in the story of Street Fighter would they ask your favorite character to handcuff themselves while they fight against their opponents. No they fight with all their might and their opponents with all theirs.  So in that sense ambidextrous joysticks is in the vein of the Street Fighter story.

 

Second the main reason why arcade tournaments in the 90s didn't have righties was because you have to actually dismantle the arcade do a whole bunch of crazy stuff flip it come back.  That was the main reason I never competed back in the day was cuz I knew I'd always be competing with handcuffs in the open market.  I understand it wasn't personal,  it's just business.  But as I said if the business model was to pay out champions and the arcade gets a percentage, then you definitely see ambi layouts on Street Fighter 2. But since the model is currently pay per loss they encourage losing by tying your hands by fighting left hand.

 

Third of all there's actually a practical reason why Polo restricts play to right hand to play.  (Notice I did not say "bans lefties", just "bans Lefty play'). In Polo, I  could sum that up in a five word phrase: head-to-head horse collisions.  In the arcades I understand though it's unfortunate.  In a tournament that's byoc or online what would be the prescident for banning Lefty sticks?  Who does that harm?  We're willing to give the Microsoft a year for the story of "when everybody plays we all win" with their special controller and Nintendo's hands-free NES controller (and rightly so)  but do something more common that's less heart tugging, it helps way many more players I'll be it in a lesser extreme manner,  you don't say yeah I could use a right-handed joystick, or even I know someone who could use a right hand stick or even acknowledge the fact that a right-handed joystick would be a good option as opposed to not having,  you said no one in their right mind would use a right-handed stick, or there's no scientific proof of being better with a right-handed stick, or suck it up, or git good.

[Draxxon]

okay man, your into it, and im with you. Good luck.

 

move those start buttons to be flippers for pinball. lol. just saying.

P.S. Green AgeTech DreamCast stick is dope. I had two. Can't replace shit easily when they wear out tho.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Draxxon

[tripletopper]

6 hours ago, Draxxon said:

okay man, your into it, and im with you. Good luck.

 

move those start buttons to be flippers for pinball. lol. just saying.

P.S. Green AgeTech DreamCast stick is dope. I had two. Can't replace shit easily when they wear out tho.

 Thanks.  I know if I want to challenge my friends and fighting games if they ever come over they would need some decent sticks.  That's a good one for the Dreamcast.

 

Ask for the pinball buttons I've got three buttons remaining to place to make a perfect 18 button thing if I were to include all eight main buttons all four directions three auxiliary buttons, the left stick in button the right stick in button and the fourth auxiliary button for the switch capture or would be for the PlayStation the touch bar, with the joystick.

 

Buy out the way I told Hori that the mean portion of the test as to whether it passes or fails is whether the main button layout works well as both a pseudo noir as well as a straight six that is ambidextrous.  Yes the starting select buttons were there from a specific reason I had during the zeros.  Also you got to balance being close enough to be able to block when resuming out of pause in a non-tournament situation,  yet far enough to not disqualify you for accidentally pausing in a tournament situation.  I know Mad catz has a thing called a start lock.  I just wonder if a simple lack of connecting the start button or toggleable interruprion of the start button would prevent accidental pausing.  If the start button is assigned one particular pin on my db37 then I just need to switch that could connect and disconnect that one pin put it in between my system and my PCB and it should work.

 

As for pinball buttons I am a fan of pinball but I usually use L and R on modern pads. Or on pre-SNES pads joystick left and the right most thumb button. Should I assume that a pinball box has a tilt sensor that is hooked up to the analog stick so that you can manually simulate trying to get a legal tilt if you normally over tilt with the left stick.

 

Finally is there a place where you could show off your collection of stuff on Atari Age?  Originally I was going to post my joystick collection collection here and thought, there probably was a better place for it and when it's up I could link it here.

[Draxxon]

I have an idea, what if you had a "reversible" control panel overlay. What if both sides had art and buttons labeled but could be installed with either side facing up?

 

 

[tripletopper]

7 hours ago, Draxxon said:

I have an idea, what if you had a "reversible" control panel overlay. What if both sides had art and buttons labeled but could be installed with either side facing up?

That would work assuming diy flipping and rewiring is easy and the art makes sense both ways if vanity art  is a desired feature.  

 

Maybe Hori USA likes my idea because I solved 90 percent of the market issues with Ambidexterity.  You brought up, and in a different way, solved the remaining 10% but assumed 100% of the people will be willing to violate warrantee to get a stick.

 

You introduce a different problem, more time and harder skills are needed to change sides.  Mine is unplug from one end, plug in other end, and reorient.  Yours requires opening, unscrewing screwing, and that's just the case.  I don't know if there is a way to do it where the only tools are a screwdriver and your hands.  If there isn't that makes it less simple.

 

But really any stick is theoretically reversible, if one doesn't care about art, however if designers have a vendetta against right stickers  they could booby trap the pieces with feartures to prevent reversibility, like an asymmetric art board, or hard to undo and redo wiring, which to some people, like me,  is anything beyond using a screwdriver and your hands 

 

Hey, a DeeJay joystick would be a good reversible vanity joystick theme.  Fun ambi fact that most moderate fans of Street Fighter know: The main behind the scenes reason the word "Maximum" is printed on his pants is because that was the combined largest and most suitable to character word that's horizontally flippable when printed vertically.  Horizontally flipping sprites only works with using exclusively  side-by-side symmetric characters:

AHIMOTUVWXYilowx0

Quote

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by tripletopper
A couple typos