I want lemon PS-14-G’s.
@armi0024 - Can you see about getting these balltops?
Who knows?
It seems like a good chunk (20-30%?) of what they show at those expos are prototypes and not actual production items…
Seimitsu and Sanwa have shown control levers like an LED model of the LS-56 (-58?) and a magnetic joystick that so far haven’t shown up in regular production. How much is Sanwa gonna charge for their magnetic joystick??? $100??? Is it really that useful??? I didn’t think the silent JLF was worth $75!
Honestly, I think Hori has set the bar higher with the Hayabusa for quality in manufacture and performance. As nice as new colors from Sanwa or Seimitsu are, they’re gimmicky and don’t address the serious manufacturing shortfalls and performance issues some their best-known existing products have. They’re side-stepping the issues with the existing JLF and LS-joysticks IMHO. New colors are good for collectors (heck, I collect them, too!) but not so much for people actually looking for something to improve or give them an edge in competitive gameplay where they might be playing for some prize money.
I know people can’t make a living playing fighting games (right now!) like they can with FPS shooters at the more popular PC tourneys BUT it’s still not great to play in a tourney and have a controller break on you because of poor quality construction and bad plastic OR miss moves because of mushy microswitches and poor engage/deflection… That’s happened quite a few times from what I’ve read/heard. You can’t blame everything that goes wrong on human beings. Some of the existing arcade parts do have construction and material build issues!
But most of these complaints come from people who refuse to learn anyways, thus destroying the plausibility of their claims.
Yes I do understand there folks with legitimate issues.
Trust me on this –
You DO NOT want controllers to go back to the Atari 2600 joystick days.
IF the manufacturers had their way OR gamers just didn’t care – and we still kind of see that with people who will not play with anything but their favorite Sanwa, Seimitsu, or Happ/iL parts --, we’d be stuck with controllers that make the older Hori Fighting Sticks and Mad Catz SE parts look like pure platinum. That’s how much better I think that even my least favorite Japanese parts are!
Those Atari controllers were pure crap and as young as I was back then I understood that, too! LOL
The Atari controllers got way looser over time and eventually broke. There was simply no practical way to repair them because they didn’t make replacement parts specifically for them. People had to buy spare controllers or “kitbash” parts or modify existing hardware store items to repair broken 2600 joysticks. (Not that in retrospect that I personally think that kind of effort is worth it…)
I can’t write a FAQ on Wico joysticks and other parts but I had experience with two Wico joysticks for almost 10 years playing on Atari-based systems and an Atari 800 computer in general. I understand there are purists that want the “authentic” arcade experience with original Wico parts or reproductions of the sticks and buttons but, again, my experience was enough that I’m NOT going on that trip with those people, either… LOL
You simply can’t play Capcom or SNK fighters very well with joysticks like the old Wico’s. They weren’t made for those kinds of games… it’s different playing Pac-Man and Donkey Kong versus Street Fighter. Part of why I like the LS-32 is because I can go back and forth and play different styles of games with the same controller. The restrictor subguide for the LS-32 is also decent for Pac-Man; the subguide is one the things that is BETTER on the LS-32 than the LS-40 for instance. Can’t necessarily switch between games as well with the JLF and some of the other in-production control levers today. I’ve tried that; didn’t work so well for me…
(Oddly enough I still want to buy a reproduction Wico balltop handle from Paradise Arcade Shop but that’s a separate thing… a red, 38mm balltop handle doesn’t throw off me the way a floppy, poorly recentering control stick will…)
I know Markman wants to collect every joystick ever made but I’m perfectly happy with higher-quality product from Seimitsu and Hori.
okay @GeorgeC you completely lost me with that last rant.
My issue is alot of the complains people have for there modern arcade sticks, and if you listen to them carefully is not the hardware.
The people do not bother learning how to play fighters on a stick, expect instant results. Rather than blame themselves and their laziness they blame the hardware.
There always pastern to these claims too. It is usually some guy is new to what ever fighting game. He has just bought a stick thinking that improve his game and not even a few hours later the guy rage quits and
he wants us to tell us how to “FIX HIS FIGHTSTICK” because it must be the controller and not him. And any mod or trick we tell him with either do nothing for him (and he rages more) or work by the placebo effect.
You need to do learn the basics before deciding your stock Sanwa JLF is crap and move to Seimitisu, Hayabusa, Korean or what have you.
There still MvC2 players who swear by the Happ Competion joystick.
There should be no reason someone should be blaming brand-new out-of-the-box arcade sticks for there inability to pull off certain combos and moves.
If your execution is sloppy, no joystick in the world will help you. No amount of mods or gate changes will help that.
It is why I have absolutely no shame in jumping down some scrubs throat for bringing up Octagonal gates thinking that will help his game.
well i’ve been using an ls-40 for close to a month now and it has officially dethroned the ls-32 for me (dat gate!). anybody know which of these new 2014 seimitsu’s is the most similar to the ls-40?
None of them.
pootnannies,
The LS-60 is another LS-56 retread… at least it sounds that way. It’s been a while since Seimitsu introduced a totally new joystick design. They tend to repackage and reuse existing joystick parts again and again to save some money. You can look at the parts lists for the LS-joystick types on Akihabarashop.jp and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a pop-up scrolldown menu that has a list of all the individual parts available for order. There are common parts for shaft assemblies and mounting plates shared by at least two LS-joysticks each on the list.
The “new” LS-58 they listed is just a retread of the existing LS-58 design with 0.187-tab microswitches instead of a substrate/PCB with soldered-in microswitches that the existing LS-58-01 has. Nothing new there… and again, it’s basically an LS-56 with a looser spring.
The LS-40 was an attempt to redesign the LS-32. It has more in common with the LS-32 in some aspects than the other LS-joysticks HOWEVER the shaft on the LS-40 shares common shaftcovers and dustwashers with the other LS-joysticks except the LS-33 (and LS-32 obviously). The LS-33 is the most different joystick of the LS-series and shares the fewest common parts with the other LS-joysticks.
The LS-40 and LS-32 share the same spring and mounting plates. Pretty much everything else on their bases is different. The microswitches DO NOT feel exactly the same… The pictures I’ve seen of the microswitch cases with the stamped serial numbers suggest at least a mild difference in the switch types. Actuators and pivot bearings on the LS-40 and LS-32 are different because the LS-32 has a wider shaft. IF the microswitches on the LS-32 and LS-40 are the same, then the main reasons they feel different on switch activation are most likely the differences in the actuator designs and throw characteristics of the joysticks.
Personal opinion – even though the LS-40 looks a lot like the LS-32 and shares some common parts it plays a bit more like the LS-56. It has a shorter throw and shorter switch engage. It was more comfortable for me to use than the LS-58-01 (the revised LS-56 design) but still very different than the LS-32. There are things that I like better on the LS-32 such as the subguide restrictor and its generally more forgiving input action. You have to be more precise on the LS-40 with movements and have a lighter touch on it in general.
People are NOT all lazy…
There’s a one-size fit all mentality with a bunch of things in life… that just doesn’t work for everybody.
I get more upset at lack of effort and tendency of people to be inflexible but it’s very dangerous to assume people aren’t doing things just because they’re lazy.
This stuff costs good money and takes free time that many people just don’t have. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of how involved fighting games can be and how long the learning curve can be…
There are games I won’t touch because of complexity and control issues. I was never a huge fan of the Virtua Fighter games because you practically have to have a fighting game PhD to play those well! They’ve also had wonky control response and bad game engine physics in the past… I never liked the way the characters just float above the ground and fall like feathers in past VF games… Very, very awkward game series to me!
It takes about a year to learn to play SF2 well. The control inputs themselves can take a month or two to get the hang of timing regardless of the controller used but a more comfortable, ergonomic controller is preferrable… putting it all together took me over a year because of lack of decent controller support back when I first ran across SF2.
My personal experience is that more ergonomic controllers and better parts DO affect your gameplay.
Over a period of a year learning to play SF2 back in the SNES days, I didn’t have much luck with the game because of the pitifully bad SNES pads.
The SNES pads were not made for SF2. It was very awkward having to hit shoulder buttons for fierce punches and fierce kicks and I didn’t much care for reprogramming buttons to swap punch/kick intensities, either. The SNES control pad’s D-pad was also sub-optimal height and very stiff from what I remember, too. It was difficult for me to do diagonal movements with that D-pad. Maybe Japan had better alternative control pads out right away for fighting games on the 16-bit systems that weren’t the Neo Geo but it was at least a year after the original SF2 released on SNES before decent fighting pads were released in the US! This was before I had a credit card or Internet access… I don’t even think there were many websites selling video games or arcade parts prior to the mid-1990s.
For a while, I played the SF2 SNES ports with Innovation pads that had the special moves programmed into them.
I only learned to execute the SF2 special moves well without a “memory” pad AFTER Capcom released their six-button Soldier Pads on the market for the SNES, Sega Genesis, and 3DO. The Capcom controller button layout and (looser) D-pad height were much better suited to SF2 on the SNES than the Nintendo pad.
The JLF was my introduction to Japanese arcade lever parts although I’d owned and played with Hori and Ascii joysticks in the past… Closest I had with near-arcade quality was the PS1 Namco Joystick but I did not have a great experience with it (hated the stiff-feeling buttons, the joystick was a bit loose for my likes) and sold it soon after I got rid of my PS1 gear.
Switching from the JLF worked out pretty good for me. The Seimitsu and Hori joysticks are night-and-day from the JLF…
after more time with the ls-40, i’m starting to regret buying it. it’s a little too sensitive. keep in mind i’m just evaluating it from personal experience and not from it’s official measurements. it feels like it makes contact with it’s switches with very little throw but the contact with the gate feels just a little too long so i’m using more force than necessary because i don’t respond to the clicks of the switches but instead to the gate. i’m getting super jumps and whatnot from it when all i want is a 236 lol. i think i’m going to get that new ls-32-01S even though after reading your post about the ls-33 makes me curious to try it.
you seem to know just about everything about Seimitsu sticks.
Take the levers off and see how you like it then.
So wait, when is LS-60 supposed to be announced? It’s April 2014 already.
edit: should have read page 2, already ‘confirmed’ to be an even softer LS-58. How horrible.
Knowing how slow it can take things to get out of Japan, we’ll get it when we will get it.
Traditionally, Japan’s almost always been ahead of the US by around 2-3 three months with new parts releases from Sanwa and Seimitsu.
As I recall, when Seimitsu announced the LS-58-01 (solid and transparent shaft versions) that was around Spring 2010/2011(?) and it was at least 6-8 months afterwards before it showed up at Akihabarshop.jp (Fall the year of the announcement). I think it was around a year after the arcade expo announcement that it finally popped up in arcade vendor shops in the US – about another 3-5 months after Akihabarashop.jp started carrying it.
Spoiler
(FYI, it seemed to me that the buzz around the LS-58-01 died within a year after people figured out it was just a softer spring version of the LS-56 with a re-engineered mounting area. The idea behind the LS-58 never made any sense! It’s never been as popular as the LS-32 or LS-56 at any rate. Even the LS-40 seems to show up more often in store inventories than the LS-58 – at least States-side.)
Things are a bit different today. The US arcade parts vendors are better set up now, have closer ties to Sanwa and Seimitsu through their agents, and will likely get the new parts soon after or around the same time as the Japanese parts vendors (Akihabarashop.jp and other Japanese-based) if they see that their American-based customers actually want the new parts. There’s any number of part models that never left Japan because there wasn’t a huge demand for them in Japan to begin with.
I think Sanwa’s going to have more luck with the revised Silent JLF (5-prong adapter, slightly improved performance according to Arcade Shock’s Facebook site) than Seimitsu will with the LS-60 unless people have gotten over the whole silent parts craze. I predict the LS-60 isn’t going to sell to that many people after what happened with the LS-58… They’ve been told what it is ahead of time!
I don’t know what the Japanese players think about the LS-58 in all honesty. It’s just been kind of cussed at around here because of the whole spring issue and Seimitsu muddying its already confusing parts catalog again with having to redesign mounting plates to fit just the LS-58. Arcade Shock and its proclamations on its exclusive Seimitsu edition of the newer design Qanba’s aside, I don’t know of any website or publication (English-speaking) that proclaims the LS-58 being the “preferred joystick” of Seimitsu lovers. I’ve been under the impression that the LS-32 was still the most popular Seimitsu arcade joystick, period, followed by the LS-56.
From what I’ve seen on modding blogs/threads (japanese, 2ch), most people just used LS-58 because it mounted similarly to JLF and had fancy colors, to match the ps-14-k/kn’s.
So yeah, generally, LS-32 is the go-to Seimitsu joystick for most players, and would swap that in if they had the chance, some even mod the ls-32 extensively just to make them work/mount right. the LS-58 just served as an alternative (ease of install) for retail sticks that didn’t support SS-Plate.
Update: It seems like LS-32-01-S/LS-32-S has been renamed to LS-34-01 & LS-34
http://www.seimitsu.co.jp/newpage22.html
release date changed again to next month.
same goes for LS-60.
Seriously? They have the dumbest ass naming convention in the world.
yeah and jlf-tp-8yt-sk rolls off the tongue pretty easy
haha i jest, they’re all stupid. but it’s good for catalog and book keeping purposes i guess.
I don’t see what’s wrong with LS-32, LS-32-P, LS-32-S, LS-32-PS. P designates PCB, S designates Shaft cover. What’s so hard about that? C’mon Seimitsu get your shit straight.
Too simple. Not enough JDM.