We’re talking about Japanese arcades, not western arcades. I don’t know that circular movement was ever really a thing with Japanese levers once the “candy cab” format was popularized. My point in the prior post is that the square gates didn’t protect those levers from heavy wear, and they actually fared worse than abused American style levers. The square isn’t going to stop inexperienced users from mauling- it certainly doesn’t stop the ham-fisted friend I keep referring to.
I should further clarify that I don’t think lever A, a Japanese lever with a square gate that is abused is going to fare better than lever B, a Japanese lever with an octagonal gate that is equally abused. Both will incur damage, both will require maintenance and upkeep while receiving that sort of use.
The Namco Arcade Stick from 1996 has a square gate let alone some other sticks too.
Also as for worn in gates from pros, unless the pros grind the hell out of their gates that many I doubt do.
I’ve been using the same gate in one of my JLF’s for about 5 years now and I cleaned and relubbed it lately and it looks brand new, I don’t grind the gate and I don’t do square motions with the stick even though the gates square, I think a lot of people think you need to be doing square shape motions on a square gate or something.
(Like a QCF Hadouken you don’t have to grind the gate or do a box motion and at the worst doing a motion like that you will tap the bottom middle of the gate and right middle if your circular motion is larger than normal, motions just have to be large enough to activate the microswitches.
I also sometimes tap the corners of the square gate doing corner moves like air dashing.
That’s a fair enough point. But, are Japanese Arcade players as ham-fisted as Americans are on the equipment? I’ll bet they are not. Let me clarify further, the square-gate design was found to reduce wear-and-tear on commercial joysticks used by Japanese customers and Japanese play style. It may not have been designed to reduce wear-and-tear on commercial joysticks used by ham-fisted American play styles. Hence, the widespread use of HAPP’s in North America before the 2000’s.
Square gates only started popping up with regularity in America after our arcade market croaked. Japanese levers were designed for thin metal panels, not the big wooden panels we grew up with. American demand for Japanese parts didn’t hit critical mass until Madcatz’s Street Fighter 4 sticks introduced more people to them. I suspect that few American people (even among the niche fighting game or shmup market) outside of California (where one may have been more likely to encounter Japanese cabinets) were aware of the difference in Japanese parts pre-Evo (the first of which was in 02).
There were a few outliers such as the Namco, but as someone who’s 32 and grew up playing fighting games (all the way back to SF1, SF2, and Fatal Fury), I can tell you firsthand I didn’t know the difference back then. Actually, I recall my mom buying me what might have actually been a pretty decent Japanese parts SNES stick on clearance at a Sears store (this was probably 95 or 96, had a metal case IIRC), we ended up returning it because I thought it was cheap junk or defective because of the square restrictor. I read EGM (and anything fighting game related I could find) like it was my Bible back then, and I literally had no idea. I remember seeing the Namco stick advertised in booklets- I wanted one, but it was quite a chunk of change for a kid/teenager. MAS sticks (or something like them) were regularly advertised in magazines, but again, they were very cost prohibitive to kids/teens. Everyone I knew just stuck to pads at home, it was much more difficult to really research this sort of thing before the widespread adoption of the internet.
Also, the few home console sticks I do recall a few people owning back then were things like the SN/SG fightstick or the SNES advantage, which had circular movement.
Yeah, back then especially with no internet it wasn’t easy to find stuff out, I didn’t even know different gates existed, heck I though the circular gates on some of the cabs I played on were just missing the gate lol
Another thing about square gates is that some people really like them for charge characters. When playing CVS2 with Guile, it’s easy to know where the corners are at to keep charge and do inputs. You could hold a db. charge, then go to df., db., ub. going straight from corner to corner. It kinda also makes it easier to do roll cancel charge motions like roll cancel flash kick and etc.
I bet though a lot of OG CVS2 players got good at C-Guile with MAS sticks so it shouldn’t really be an issue of what gate you use, but I do like Square for that purpose though. So I wouldn’t say it’s an arbitrary design choice to make square gates.
When SFII came out on the SNES and Genesis, the market exploded with new sticks. Amoung my group a friends, it was a buying frenzy because we were all playing SFII in the arcade and going to local tournaments. We even dusted off an friends old and forgotten TurboGrafx CD to play “Fighting Street”. Off the top of my head, ASCII made a stick that felt like a round-gate, which was pretty good considering the era it was released. Sega also had a six button branded stick for Genesis, that I recall feeling like a round-gate, they also made a really bad Saturn stick with also what seemed like a round-gate. There are at least two other brand that I can’t remember, unless I start looking them up. Note, I’m not saying these are great sticks, I’m just saying they didn’t have square gates.
No one is going to admit it, but this situation is simply the result of players adapting to whats widely available and has zero to with performance. If more round-gate joysticks got on the market, their would be a corresponding increase in competitive players using them. The discussions regarding the how and why it can be done, won’t exists until a larger group of people start doing it and explain the circumstances in larger numbers. The discussion is currently one sided, due to volume of use and blind adherence to the spoken standard.
Heh, you must have grown up in a higher income area than I did then. Let’s just say that local rental stores made tons of money on SNES/Genesis Street Fighter games in my town.
I’ve read it, I’m not taking about Joystick Engagements. I’m talking about natural, biological, hand movements that some people have, which may favor a circle-gate.
Did you read my original post? I hadn’t touched a stick in 15 years, used a square-gate and had 30% execution rate. I didn’t understand why, so I borrowed a circle-gate stick on the recommendation of a friend and my execution rate jumped to 80%. My point was, why would I spend limited practice time getting used to a square gate, when I can spend that time instead on getting better at diagonals and down-backs without needing to use the gate as a guide. For example, in 100 hours, will I gain more by getting used to the square-gate and upping my executions from 30% to say 60% OR just use a circle gate, keep my current 80% execution, improve it slowly and use the bulk of that 100 hours perfecting diagonals and down-backs without the square-gate as a guide?
The current Joystick Engagements discussion doesn’t take into account the downside of reinventing the wheel with muscle memory. Would it not be better for some players to enhance what they already have instead? Especially considering they will not be competitive enough to attend tournaments anyway?
How many players would be farther along now, IF, they had not listened to the common recommendation of “get used to the square-gate”. I’ll bet there are quite a few.
Try a LS-56 with an octagonal gate if the smaller diagonal engage zones of circular JLF restriction are giving you trouble. For a cheaper option to improve diagonals, try a GT-Y plate with a Kowal actuator in your current JLF. You will find that either option will also reduce throw, which I personally prefer.
Just read up on it, sounds like a good recommendation and it looks like it will fit in the free stick I got. Its seems like something a Mortal Kombat/Midway cabinet would have had in it. Thanks for tolerating my perspective.
I stand by the recommendation that you should use whatever you feel comfortable with, and whatever you perform best with. I feel that the only reason, and strong emphasis on “only”, any individual should cave and “settle” with a square gate (especially if they perform better with something else) is if they’re concerned about having to borrow someone else’s stick mid-tournament.
Now, I went from hating square and using circle, to disliking circle and using octogonal, to outgrowing octogonal and moving back to square. And I think I’ve gotten progressively better along the way. That being said, I don’t think everyone will (or can) make that same progression.
Bottom line is still: use whatever you feel you’re doing best with.
Don’t get caught up with what is the “standard” or “recommended”. The current standard is Sanwa JLFs with square gate with a ball top with Sanwa OBSF-30s in the Vewlix layout. I personally use an LS-40-01 with a Sanwa bat-top and Seimitsu PS-14-KNs arranged in a Straight-6 layout. Hasn’t stopped or bothered me in the least.
The whole square-gate thing just took my by surprise. Like Rip Van Winkle, I woke up and suddenly the square-gate was the standard. I understand that things change, but the nearly 100% switch in the market was a little surprising. The way I feel, round-gates or octogon-gates shouldn’t be a custom thing, it should be labeled on the retail packages with a little graphic showing the shape. I’ll bet if that were the case, the majority of first-time purchases would not be square-gates.
You haven’t touched a stick in 15 years so it shouldn’t really be a surprise lol. Arcade sticks are a niche market, they wouldn’t bother putting in custom gates and small things in these mass produced sticks when people can just go out and buy it for $2, it is a custom thing as the majority use square.
That’s a strange position to take, this isn’t some huge technological or manufacturing innovation after all. From my perspective, round-gates were around for 20+ years and worked fine, why should I have expected them to just suddenly go away?
Which is precisely why I feel strongly that square-gates is a solution to reduce wear-and-tear and factory returns at the dealer level.
You’re acting like round is better than square because you had a week of personal experience with both and found one to be easier than the other, not sure what you’re trying to get out of this that wasn’t answered in many threads before, use what you find better, doesn’t mean it’s better for everyone.
These past 30 years the Japanese used square gates, Japanese fighters are the most popular now, they also make the hardware we use so we use what they sell us and it works fine for most. American style sticks possibly didn’t sell as well or got phased out from people wanting ‘authentic Japanese parts’ for their Japanese fighters so that’s why every mass produced stick out there and what all stick using pros use are Japanese and mostly square gate.
