Awful on 360 pads, PDP pad is okay, PS2/PS3 pad seems pretty good (got 2 PS2 controllers + converter for about 20 bucks on ebay) but was the fastest ticket to giving my thumb a blister. I play SF on stick, and I was at the PDP MK event (was dope) but tbh for a tourny stick its huge and not very mobile.
Settled on a sixaxis and a ps2 for my 360 (and when im mobile & at a friends house) I got 2 because when I go to events I always want a backup incase my shit dies. I saw Brady lose his pad at a tournament and now I’ll keep an extra on me just in case I break my shit.
Ultimately the MK stick was conceived with “ergonomiks” aka it looked like it made sense. This game is sort of bipolar as its not an arcade game yet it has negative edge as if it were a SF2 machine. The controls make the most sense on a 4 button pad and the D-Pad feels way better for control that either sanwa or suzo happ from my own personal opinion.
MK is hardly command heavy and the throw/tag buttons are absolutely unnecessary.
TBH I just bought MK9 last week and even though I told myself I wouldn’t----I went out and bought the PDP Fightstick. Not because I think it’s low quality like some suggest—simply because I’m a sucker for arcade sticks like many on this site =(
Anyways I just wanted to input that, to my surprise, I am playing brilliantly on the stick (Speaking in comparison to my PS3 pad). At first the transition felt impossible as I’m simply another Street Fighter drone, but after an insignificant amount of time in the practice room, I am beating players who definitely have been playing MK much longer than I. I do not feel held back by the controls when I lose matches, but simply being outplayed.
Again, I bought the stick because of my love for them, 99% of the reason why I bought it. But I honestly will use this at tourneys, it feels great.
keyboard… and i don’t mean a keystick, just regular keyboard!
the small buttons are perfect for this game… and arrow keys are great for dashes and everything
W, A, S, D - directions
Space - block
Left Shift - throw
Madcatz SF4 fightpads work amazingly well for MK since the layout is very similar to old SNES controllers. It uses a floating dpad that’s very responsive. I could barely do DF fireballs on the XBox dpad, but it works every time on Madcatz pad. Highly recommended for pad players.
My only real complaint with this controller is the six button face-layout. All things considered I’d be ignoring them anyway, but I have a tendency to hit things by accident, and there’s no way to un-map those buttons.
I have come up with a universal layout design that should work well for stick players both for MK and Capcom fighting games. It won’t do you a lot of good if you already own a stick, but if you are building a custom or you can get a custom-made mounting plate for another stick, this should prove a lot more versatile than the standard Madcatz controller or the PDP TE stick.
You pretty much get the best of both the Vewlix and MK mounting plates that Madcatz has available for their TE sticks. It looks a little funny but it should be a good solution for anyone who wants to kick ass in both Street Fighter and MK without having to lug around more than one stick.
Last night I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning, and after making some additional refinements I HAVE PRODUCED A WORKING PROTOTYPE FOR A STREET FIGHTER / MK HYBRID STICK! It looks like MacGyver made it, but it works, and it works GOOD!
The parts are all iL-made since I don’t have any Sanwa parts on hand ATM that I could use, but for testing purposes they work fine. I am really pumped because I think I have finally come up with an ergonomic layout that sacrifices as little as possible for each side of the layout while still maintaining an authentic but ergonomic feel. The Street Fighter half is virtually indistinguishable from a pure Vewlix layout, and likewise the Mortal Kombat half is so similar to the Madcatz TE MK panel’s layout that I doubt anyone would know the difference unless they took out a ruler and measured. It’s more ergonomically designed than the original MK panel due to the angled buttons (which are also closer together), and after playing some of the old MK arcade games on my laptop last night I think I have refined this layout to its maximum potential.
The only thing that may take a little getting used to for MK and SF vets is that the MK buttons are a bit closer to the joystick than what the official MK fightsticks, and the SF buttons are a little further away from the joystick than on the official SF fightsticks (which I actually prefer, anyway). It’s a bit of a compromise but it should be easy to get used to. Overall it works great for both games, and if you want to play both from the same stick then this seems like it’s probably the way to go. I’ll have the final template up soon in the Tech Talk forum soon, if anyone is interested in it.
honestly, what’s wrong with a common stick layout?
it’s just 4 attack buttons and an extra button for block. You really don’t need some fancy new layout to accomodate that. shit is perfectly “ergonomical” or whatever just the way it is on a common japanese stick. TE/HRAP/VSHG/etc.
I have tried both, and it all boils down to preference. MK is playable on a standard 6 button Vewlix / Sega layout, however I feel that the authentic arcade layout works better for this particular game. Many people are fine using a standard joystick layout in MK, however some high-level players have gotten so frustrated in trying to get used to it that they’ve given up on using a stick for the game and went back to gamepads, while others who have used the MK TE stick say that it is superior to either a gamepad or mapping the controls to a standard 6 button layout.
No-one uses the last 2 buttons on the Vewlix layout anyway, so why not put all 8 buttons to use to accommodate multiple formats? If the standard 6 buttons is all you’ve got to work with on your fightstick then getting used to playing MK that way is a perfectly viable option for plenty of people. However if you have the space on your stick for 8 buttons, I figure you might as well make the most out of the potential you have available.
I guess. More power to you if people are digging it. I personally don’t see the need. I haven’t encountered a game yet where the traditional 6 button layout did not work.
I use
… FP BP
BLK FK BK
feels way more natural to me than any of those weird MK layouts, including the traditional one. But maybe thats just from me coming from VF (block button position).
I was considering getting a stick since most of em look good, but most seem a bit pricey. I’m wary however since im not really much of a fighting game player anyway, infact I’ve only just started practicing in MK9/MVC3.
As a 360 user im sticking with a normal controller and using the analogue stick at least for now, though I am having problems in MK9 at least with controll issues. I’ve noticd that on the character select screen, if I move the stick down and any fraction at all to the left it seems to move diagonally. It leaves me a bit fustrated when trying to move backwards and forwards, ending up jumping and crouching respectively when I really dont want to. I’ve used two controllers and I’m getting the same problems, I even change the way I hold the controller with not much success :S
I’d still like to try an arcade type stick, are there any cheap ones that are decent for the 360?
I use Mad Catz Stick with the default layout, just took an hour to get used to. It seems like the more different games I play w/ the stick the eaiser it is to play new games w/ it. I used to use it only for SSF4, but after a month playing Marval3 w/ a pad I forced myself to play with the stick, now I play SF, Marval, BB, MK, and VF all with the stick all on defaults
Went the ps3 pad route initially. For an MK noob, the trigger button for BLK is just so natural. Plus, no awkward hand contortion for some enhanced specials.
Then when going to the offline gaming center and was placed in front of an xbox I was like WHOA! This d-pad sucks major league balls.
So just for the sake of “standardizing” a controller for the game, stick FTW. Then also realized my execution for dial-a-kombos is hella better on stick too.
I just really really wish there was a Kombat panel for SE cabs because that is my secondary unused stick, would have been put to good use. Grrrr.
