I have recently placed my order for the Hori SCV stick. Now this will be my very first arcade stick, haven’t touched an arcade in like 15 yrs. Anyways people keep suggesting me to switch out the square gate with an octagonal one for better performance? I hear this isn’t mandatory but more of preference. I do want to buy a octagonal gate just to see the difference. I’m looking at focusattack.com and I found some but I don’t know exactly what is it I need to buy. That’s why I’m posting here.
Now can someone tell me what Is it that I need, what does a plate do?
1st link: Paradise Arcade’s custom-made JLF octogonal insert, replaces the middle part of the existing square gate (is basically only the orange section of the item below)
2nd link: official Sanwa JLF octogonal gate
3rd link: The SCV stick comes with a Sanwa JLF. The link here is for a Seimitsu stick. Not what you’re looking for.
So it’ll be either of the first two items, depending on what exactly you want: the cheaper, fighting-game-community-made insert that replaces only what you need, or the official product that’s slightly more expensive and is less work to swap out.
Your first link is a good part to buy, but I recommend sticking with the square gate for a bit and seeing how you like it.
As one of the leading arcade part companies in the industry, Sanwa know what they are doing. There’s a reason the square gate comes stock on all their coveted JLF sticks.
It may seem odd at first if you haven’t played on one before, but Square has various notable design advantages over the Octo or other more circular type gates. Give it a chance.
And if you find you don’t like it, its extremely easy to open the stick up, remove the gate, and install a different one.
IMHO, Square gate is superior because…SCIENCE! :tup:
Note that FocusAttack has inserts too, is easy to replace them. I would recomend going with True Grave’s comment, about sticking with the square gate for a while, it’s made for shorter movements . If you feel like mashing the stick all the way out is for you, go for the oct.
I would recommend sticking with the default square gate and only switching it out if you’re unhappy with it.
Good sticks don’t require that much movement to activate the directions, so you don’t even really need to touch the corners for most movements. “Riding” the gate is a bad habit and without that habit, the square gate works better. If you’re re-learning how to use a stick from scratch, don’t learn that bad habit and you’ll most likely be fine with the square gate.
Here’s a link going into great detail about the Science! and why square gates are default for quality sticks. Read the part under “8-way”.
Play around with the square gate. Personally I had the gut feeling that I would not enjoy the square gate and I never did, I prefer the Octo gate. After I bought the octo gate, it was pure heaven for me
