At my arcade all the joysticks feel worn out and all mushy from excessive use. (Sanwa JLF’s) At first I didn’t like it but now I got used to it and prefer the mushy worn out feeling compared to the newer ‘clicky’ feeling.
I was wondering if there’s a way to rapidly wear out a Sanwa JLF’s micrswitiches so that it feels worn out and mushy like at the arcades?
Play Marvel
give the stick to a 5 year old for like an hour… they will wear the shit out of it (anyone who has ever seen a parent let their kids just run around an arcade will know what I am talking about)
lol, keep the ideas coming guys; if anything the ideas are good for a laugh or two 
Letting complete joystick noobs play for an hour works wonders, let my friends younger 18year old brother and his mates play for an hour or two on Friday and my new sticks already felt soft and mushy…the youth of today, never experienced playing in an arcade, almost brings tears to my eyes.
Word of advice best not to be there when seeing them play on joystick, I had to look away and think of England or I definitely would have cried seeing them abuse the brand new stick.
i’m thinking of using a rope and ceiling fan.
Don’t do it man, you still have a lot to live for!
Sorry, I just had to say that. Well, you can try spinning it around in circles everytime you have some free time.
That’s what I’m currently doing lol.
Just pull the spring out of there and stretch the fuck out of it, that’ll loosen up the stick. If you want to loosen up the switches just put some cherries in it.
get one of those tiny slinky toys i see in the quarter machines and replace the spring with that
You could also just ask around and see if anyone has a beat up old TP-MA they’d be willing to part with… Might be easier.
No it won’t. It’ll do the opposite.
are they using japanese parts at your arcade?
Shows what I know. I’ve just been using the same thing for years and never thought or worried about it being mushy or not.
yup. BlastCity cabinets. Sanwa parts.
just “rent” it to Daigo or Justin Wong. They play 24/7/365
else, tied it to a rope and let it tug of war with your Rottweiler ^^
Even a worn out joystick should be “clicky”. If it doesn’t click then it didn’t make a connection and you will have a dropped input. You sure they are using JLF sticks?
If their sticks don’t make clicking noises they may be using cherry switches, which would be quieter. It makes sense that an arcade operator would replace broken microswitches in a joystick with his spare ones, which would be cherries.
haha
Lol! My five year old son used my TE to play Zangief and it took about a day for the stick loosen up.
Yeah good post, sort of what I was thinking.
The eventual breakdown process of old arcade parts is one of the few relevant things that–as far as I know–has not thoroughly been posted about or discussed here in Tech Talk, or anywhere else on the English end of the internet for that matter.
There is a (small) difference in feel between a brand new JLF and one that has been “broken in.” Mushy is definitely not how I’d describe it, though. It doesn’t take too much time to reach this point. On a personal stick, this is like two or three months of regular play. It happens pretty gradually too. Most people seem to prefer the feel of the stick once it has been broken in. Fortunately, it keeps this feel for a loooooong time. (I believe this is the reason that Sanwa brand is the favourite in Japan.)
I think that there is another stage of life though, very late in its still-functional lifespan, where it does feel softer. It’s not really any less resistant to push in (already as light as can be), but the clicking noise is a little more quiet, and it doesn’t spring back to neutral as hard or as loudly as it used to (doesn’t really seem any slower though), I guess compared to that crisp new feel it might be considered sloppy. It loses a very small amount of responsiveness but it usually still works well.
All joke answers aside, it takes an INSANE amount of abuse to change the feel of a Sanwa JLF to this point. On a personal stick, I’m talking two or three years of regular play, with a lot of extra random abuse thrown in. Occasionally a JLF will just plain crap out before it actually reaches this point. I think a lot of individuals would prefer to change out their sticks once they reach this point anyway.
Take this all with a grain of salt. This has just been my personal experience, and I’m sure there are players who would disagree with me on some of this.
On an individual basis, sticks can be weird sometimes too. For a high-quality brand like Sanwa, they’re so consistent from stick to stick that it would be a total lie to say that every stick is different or that some are better than others, but each stick is still an individual. I have a two year old JLF right now where one day it suddenly stopped registering diagonal up-right about 90% of the time, even though up still worked fine and right still worked fine (makes no sense to me!!!). I figured it was toast but I decided to play with it for a little while longer anyway before I swapped it out, just to try and learn more about wear and tear on older joysticks, and two days later it magically started working again. I’m pretty sure that it is on its last leg of life and every day I use it I sort of expect that it will stop working again, but honestly it’s been a few months since then and I haven’t had another problem with it since. :looney:
Among North American players who grew up playing in arcades on tough Happ controls, the common assumption is that Japanese parts are less durable due to their lighter feel. However, the truth is that they can take just as much punishment and they will last just as long.