One good thing

[Gabriel]

This morning I found myself awakened by a sound I thought was rain. I like rain. I find it peaceful.

 

Then my brain turned on for the morning and I remembered that I shouldn't be able to hear rain outside while I'm in my apartment. I got up and listened for where it was coming from and soon tracked the sound coming from both my bathroom and walk in closet in stereo. This immediately made me panic as most of my Star Wars collectibles are in the closet. It turns out something had happened in the apartment upstairs. Their apartment is wrecked, and half of mine is a puddle. I've been dealing with this catastrophe all morning. I'm tired. I'm grouchy. I'm just not in my happy place.

 

On the bright side, my new Hori PS3 fighter stick arrived. I mostly like the way it looks. It feels fairly comfortable.

 

I must admit I'm not immediately blown away by the controller. My favorite fighter sticks are the old ASCII Genesis Fighter Sticks SG-6 and the more or less identical model for the SNES. I haven't liked a fighter stick since those. They didn't have arcade parts or anything, but damn did they feel right and handle well. When I compare the Hori stick to the old ASCII sticks it feels loose and the buttons don't have a very good feel to them either. (Thankfully it's not anywhere near as bad as the old SNES Street Fighter II sticks or the various garbage ASCII PS1 sticks).

 

I'm not doing very well playing fighting games with the new stick either. At this point I'm willing to chalk it up to the fact I haven't been playing new fighters with a stick since the end of the 16 bit era. I'm simply not used to it anymore. It will come back to me. I hope, or I've wasted my money.

[moycon]

I have a Hori stick as well and wasn't too impressed with it. I paid probably like $50 for it and have only used it for about 30 minutes. Just doesn't feel right.

 

Sorry to hear about you water troubles. I hope the Star Wars stuff was ok?

[cimerians]

That hella sucks....you better check on the Star Wars stuff.

 

I havent bought a stick yet. I've been waiting to see what to get. There's some custom made sticks out there as well as the X-Arcade but they are extremely expensive.

[keilbaca]

That sucks about your collectibles, I had the majority of my magic the gathering collection wrecked by a leak.

 

I personally like the Hori sticks, but I am used to the japanse style arcade parts. My 360 stick is a modified Tekken 5 stick, and I wreck people on xbox live on SF4. I will most likely be doing the same kind of mod to my Street Fighter Anniversary collection joystick for ps2/xbox, because I plugged in the stick one day into my ps2, and got no response. Plugged it into my ps2 to pc adapter, completely dead.

 

The hori sticks make better shmup sticks more than anything else, that I did find out. I love using my Hori Fighter Stick 2 for the ps2 to play Mushihime Sama, and the other japanese shmups.

[Gabriel]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm sorry for crying in my beer. Today has just not been good, and the 14 hour workday which preceeded it didn't improve matters.

 

The most severely endangered Star Wars vehicle was the Naboo Royal Starcruiser. Luckily, it's shaped in such a way that water doesn't pool on it, and the drip was hitting a part of it where the interior would not get wet. But just a foot over and it would have caught my BMF (Big Millenium Falcon), and that would have been a disaster.

 

The hori sticks make better shmup sticks more than anything else, that I did find out. I love using my Hori Fighter Stick 2 for the ps2 to play Mushihime Sama, and the other japanese shmups.

 

I haven't taken it out for a SHMUP test drive yet, but while I was playing King of Fighters with it, I was coincidentally thinking how great it would be to play Raiden III with. I guess I should try some arcade classics with it too.

 

Now that I've got this thing, Blaz Blue and KOF 12 had better get US PS3 releases. Even if they don't, I guess I've got more than enough PS2 fighters to get use out of it.

[DaytonaUSA]

Glad your stuff is ok man. I hope that you were able to give your upstairs neighbor a bop to the head.

[Gabriel]

BTW, everything is fine now. They replaced the padding of, cleaned and reinstalled my carpet yesterday. Now I get to move everything back the way it was. Fun fun. But I got 12 hours of sleep last night, which felt absolutely wonderful.

 

Anyway, back to the stick.

 

I hold the stick with my index finger wrapped around the ball and the tip of the finger on the right side of the stick. My middle finger braces the bottom of the ball and the left side of the stick. My knuckles are generally pointing forward and down with my ring and pinky knuckles resting against the base of the controller. This is just how I've always positioned my hand for these kinds sticks. On the SG-6 stick the base is subtly sloped, so my knuckles don't bang against the surface that much.

 

(I describe this because people hold these things in different ways. Some people more or less just grasp the ball from above. Some people hold it underhanded. Some people cross their arms.)

 

On the Hori stick, the base is just flat. So the knuckles of my ring and pinky finger are constantly banging against the base. It's not helped by the fact the stick is just a little tiny bit shorter than what I'm used to.

 

The stick feels loose, but it's not floppy. It's not like the old SF2 sticks or the PS1 sticks where you could tilt the base and the stick would flop over to the side. But it feels like there's a square template underneath which makes the stick tend towards diagonals and makes flowing circular motions feel strange.

 

The buttons still feel awkward to me. I still don't like their tactile feel. They don't feel mushy, but they don't feel clicky either. In a way they feel kind of like buttons on an old pushbutton phone, but that doesn't describe it either. The buttons also feel a bit further apart than I'd like. None of this is really bad, it's just a matter of adjustment.

 

Regardless of that, if you're tired of your thumb hurting after rubbing up against a D-pad for hours, then this thing is a godsend.

[Gabriel]

I think my PS3 has finally found it's undisputed niche. It's my fighter system.

 

Japanese only PS3 fighter? No problem. My understanding is that it's all the same region. I guess I'll find out if I decide to get Battle Fantasia or BlazBlue doesn't get a US PS3 port. (Now if it could play Japanese PS2 games, I'd be in heaven because Thunder Force VI is calling.)

 

I even broke down and bought Street Fighter IV to give my PS3 and new stick something to do other than play PS2 SNK ports. I have to say I'm very pleasantly surprised.

 

In fact, I'm now disappointed I had bought Soul Calibur IV for the 360. I had bought it with the intent to play a couple of specific people online. However, it turns out they never want to play, so the disc only gets single player or local multiplayer use. I definitely would have gone for the PS3 version had I known that, as the PS3 pad would be infinitely better for that game than the 360 pad.