Adventures in Joystick Modding: Round 1

I got rather sick in February. Several trips to the doctor, as well as a specialist, and a few tests ultimately took care of the problem, but I was pretty stressed for a while. One thing that helped me get through it all was learning a bit about joysticks.

I adore fighting games. I first cut my teeth on the original Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat in arcades. Mortal Kombat's II & 3 came a bit later. I had a bit of experience with the arcade MKII thanks to a local video store, but MK3 (and later, the Ultimate revision) was mostly SNES and later the PlayStation, via Mortal Kombat Trilogy. That video store also introduced me to the Neo-Geo. I'd played the SNES version of Fatal Fury, which was okay, but I'd never seen the real hardware before. This one was a two-slot model, and featured Art of Fighting and World Heroes. I didn't really care for Art of Fighting, and although World Heroes was alright, it really felt like a Street Fighter II knock-off.

I tried more fighters as the years passed. Some were good, some bad. In my college days, my roommate Corey and friend Jay introduced me to Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Capcom vs SNK, and really got me into the King of Fighters series. I'd been aware of it, but had never given it a fair shot. Its now my favorite franchise.

It occurs to me that the campus arcade at UMass, Amherst really was amazing for fighters at that point. In the fall of '97 its big draw was the brand new Mortal Kombat 4, but it also had a rather beaten up Super Street Fighter II Turbo machine that would be replaced by a Street Fighter Alpha 3 a year later. Virtua Fighter 3 came in as soon as it was released, but the real gem was that there were three Neo-Geos. Between the three of them were The King of Fighters '94-'96, and I think '97 eventually showed up as well. One of them had Fatal Fury 3, and another had Magician Lord because its some sort of rule that Magician Lord had to show up somewhere. As an aside, a pizza place a couple miles from campus had a two-slot Neo-Geo with the Double Dragon fighter and Blazing Star, but Double Dragon eventually got replaced with Metal Slug X.

So anyway, its safe to say I'm a fighter fan. During my illness, my thoughts turned to the joystick I'd purchased a couple years previously. Its was the Standard Edition Madcatz Street Fighter IV arcade fightstick. I'd snagged it off of Amazon at a bargain price of $40 for the PS3 version. I used it with my PC and the Steam version of Street Fighter IV, because I didn't yet own a PS3. I was pretty sure I someday would, and this stick helped seal the deal.

I think its a reasonably decent entry level stick. The stock stick and buttons are Madcatz knockoffs of Sanwa parts. Specifically, as I would later learn, the JLF series of sticks and the OBSF series of buttons.

So, during my illness, I started thinking about it more. I'd since bought a PS3 and had the 2011 Mortal Kombat, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, the excellent Skullgirls, and the amazing King of Fighters XIII. I knew my stick could be better, and even though I'm not a tournament player, I wanted to improve it. However, modding was an intimidating prospect for someone who has no idea what they're doing. Then, during a productive day of googling, I found this article, which in turn lead me to this excellent video:
 

Jangofatt made the process look easy. I wasn't ready to do an art mod, and I kinda liked the stock art anyway, but the rest? I knew I could do that.

In March, I helped a friend of mine named Mark out with a concert he was promoting. On the day of the show we met up at his place early. He was curious about Mortal Kombat, so I brought it over along with my stick and a PS2 stick I had an adapter for. We played for a bit, and he really liked using the stick and started looking into them. Soon after, I discovered that a GameStop near him had the Madcatz WWE Brawl Stick for $30 and I told him. The Brawl Stick is pretty much the SFIV SE stick, just with some bad art on it (and I say that as a WWE fan). I've since been told that the build quality of the buttons is a bit better, but I didn't know that at the time.

So, Mark gets his stick, and the next time we hang out, I show him the video I linked above. He too thinks a button and stick mod could be useful, but he wants to try his hand at art as well. After taking a few days to ponder colors and whatnot, we jumped in and made a parts order from focusattack.com

I'm glad we went with Focus Attack. At the time, Lizard Lick was in the process of imploding, and we dodged a bullet there. Jaleel Beck runs a tight ship, and I'm thrilled to do business with him. We placed our order at about 4:30pm EST on Thursday, April 26^th 2012. We decided to have it sent to my place, and it arrived the following Monday.

I ended up getting a JLF stick, a green balltop, and some violet/black buttons. My color choices were simply because purple is my favorite color, and green works well with it. I also got a translucent smoke shaft cover and an octagonal restrictor gate. Mark opted to get the same shaft cover and gate.

So, I took my dog for a walk, re-watched that video and then with parts in hand, I got modding.

First, I found an old bet sheet to lay on the table to protect both the stick and table from potential scratches. Here's what it looks like when you first open it up.

The first thing I did was, as the video suggested, remove the old stick. At this point I decided it would be a little easier to change out the buttons first. This is what it looked like when I was done with that part.

After that I put in the new joystick.

To conclude, I placed the shaft cover and dust washers, and screwed on the new balltop. After that I just had to reattach the bottom panel.

The project took about half an hour. I then tested it out by firing up Super Street Fighter IV and practicing a bit with Dan. I was expecting there to be a difference in performance, but I was surprised by just how big a difference it made.

In hindsight, the colors I chose don't really go with anything, so if I were to do an art mod, I might end up replacing something. Still, I like it, and it was my first mod, so I'll probably keep it the way it is.