The Retro Stick Appreciation Thread

Tech Talk
1

I know I’m probably in some kind of weird minority here, but despite owning an Xbox 360, most of my gaming occurs on older consoles.

I recently picked up an PS1 Namco stick and the goofy nostalgia that everyone has for these immediately kicked it. I do believe it’s a genuinely good stick. There’s something magic though about it being six buttons and missing the gaudy character art. The fact that it’s 13 years old and works perfectly doesn’t hurt either. I’ve been using it nonstop despite owning a Seimitsu modded TE and a pair of HAPP SFAC sticks.

I was looking for a NES stick today (not the Advantage) and stumbled across this beauty. If $80 didn’t seem so steep it would be mine.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350187546928

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/513/asciines.jpg

Here was another candidate from Capcom(!) that has SNES and NES plugs. It doesn’t look as badass as my Ascii stick above, but I wouldn’t mind having one. $40 was also high when this probably would have been $5 back in the day at Funcoland.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220471962864

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/6630/capcomnes.jpg

Here’s a Tekken 3 stick that looks like a four button Namco/Tekken 1 stick.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1083/tekken3l.jpg

Another older stick I fancy that comes up from time to time is the C&L SNES stick that uses Happ or Happ-like parts (unsure). Whatever they are are, it’s ridiculously awesome that there was a proper stick available during the SNES era for SF.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/6461/clstick.jpg

Anyone have any old sticks they’re especially fond of? Maybe one you play on from time to time? Post it here with a picture!

2

C’mon, I know someone has a NES Advantage here.

3

I have one of those Capcom sticks, truly a badass stick.
If I recall, the cable is even modular, (NES/SNES). I don’t remember playing any fighters on it, but I definately played my share of Starfox and Gradius. I have it somewhere in this house.
<edit> I think I paid $10 for that thing from Gamestop, pre-owned maybe 8 years ago haha

4

do i win? :wgrin:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/255/dsc00043z.jpg

i bought this at a Vintage Game Store in my area that only specializes in NES, SNES, Genesis, 64, Dreamcast and PS1 games none of the new age systems (i’ve found 5 copies of MvC2 of Dreamcast there)

5

I’ve got 2 of those Stier. God they’re bad. I’ve got 1 NES Advantage back at my parents house too. God it’s such a horrible stick. Just the cheap “big ass spring sitting on top of a Dpad” for the stick and the buttons need about 5 lbs of force to be pressed it. It’s like popping bubblewrap to activate a button.

6

Aw man, this thread makes me wish I still had my Hori SNES Fight Stick. This pic is all I have left…//o

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/2420/sfc1tr4.jpg

7

i still have this pad. best pad i ever used. :cool:

8

I think the Capcom Soldier Pad was by far the best control pad you could get to play Street Fighter II (Turbo, Super, etc., etc.) on the SNES back in the day. Worked very well on most other fighting games on the system back in the day, too. In fact, not more than a week or two ago NCSX was trying to unload a crateful of the SNES/SFC Soldier Pads they still had in mint condition!

I think I owned several of those Soldier Pads back in the 16-bit days. I know I had one a-piece for the SNES, Genesis, and the 3DO during the brief six-month period I owned a 3DO! (God, was that an awful system! Sure, the 3DO didn’t break all the time like the first-generation PS1s and every make and production model of 360 seems to all the time nowdays, but it didn’t do much well other than play VideoCDs! :rofl: )

The SNES version of the Soldier Pad was by far the best of the three versions I owned. It was not the buttons that made it the best but the D-pad it had. It was a millimeter or two higher than the standard SNES control pad D-pad – which made all the difference in the world for pulling off special moves!!! --, and that D-pad was much, much more comfortable than the D-pad style used on the Genesis and 3DO.

Funny thing that an SNES controller would be more comfortable than the Sega version. For the most part, I always felt that the Sega controllers were far more comfortable and generally more practical (if just a bit too utilitarian) than the same-generation Nintendo controllers! Nintendo I think was always trying to fix things that really didn’t need fixing and introducing junk that complicated things more than they had to. With the exception of the GameCube controller, I’ve never felt particularly comfortable using any of the stock Nintendo controllers. They’re so uncomfortable and impractical in my hands…

BTW,

Does Asciiware even exist any more? I used to have one of their Saturn joysticks until a recent mishap (I screwed up the PCB trying to do a dual-mod!)… Haven’t seen anything from them since the late PS1 days.

9

This used to be my fave joystick back in the 80/90’s. The Competition Pro.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/418x627/2009/01/Competition-Pro.jpg

The Amiga SF2 version was modified to use just 1-2 buttons instead of six. I guess they must have left out some moves. I could still hadoken and tatsu with the best of em. I remember slamming it in the table, breaking the switches and soldering new microswitches back in. Good ole days.

10

I had this stick back when it first came out. Actually I still have it in my basement. This is how i rocked Super Street Fighter II (and later turbo) throughout my childhood. That big slow motion button actually just pauses and unpauses the game really fast. OH YEAH!

11

That ASCII for NES look so cool.
I want one.

And the C&L SNES one.

Alec, you had the HORI Fighting Stick for SNES?
http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~silencium/keyboard/html/hori.html

That one?
It uses TKC (Tokai Communication) MM9-2 Microswitches.
Those Microswitches are what the Buttons in Namco Arcade Stick use.
http://www.tokaicom.jp/product30/page10/detail.htm

12

the super advantage looks so crazy… it has switches everywhere on it!

i should really buy one just to have.

13

Funny story. I had the Super NES Advantage as well. Used if for hours of Turbo and Super. Now, not having much opportunity to play in the arcade, or the fact that the stick was shit, I held like a giant controller. Meaning, my left hand had all four fingers underneath and my thumb rested on top of the ball top.(Like gripping a giant sandwich).

The bottom of the controller is metal. Due to my nerves when I would get to Bison trying to beat him on higher difficulties or what have you, my hand would sweat. The bottom where my fingers were had this huge rust spot. I mean huge. People though I pissed my self cause they assumed it rested on my lap. LOL

Anyway, it exists in a box somewhere…If I can find it, I’ll post pictures.

PS. The slow motion was cool. Basically a turbo Start button. But I used it to get plenty o’ good looks at Chun Li’s and Cammy’s ass. Don’t tell me you never paused trying to see her mid flip!

14

i know i still use this stick for my SNES Clone

15

Thanks for all the replies!

Heh, Scoremaster. I really do like the color scheme on this despite the goofy name. I had a Genesis back in the day and got into SNES collecting around the the PS1 came out.

I had that Genesis pad and remember it fondly. It’s probably somewhere in storage now. It curved naturally to your hand. Granted my hand is probably twice as large now as it was then.

Yeah, $10 is about what I’d like to pay for it, not $40. :smile: It’s cool that Capcom gave a nod to the NES. It caught me off guard. I may end up with one of these yet if I can score one cheaply enough.

That’s awesome. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these on eBay. I can’t remember what they sell for.

16

The first non-system specific joysticks that I ever got as gifts were Wico joysticks. This was circa 1981, 1982.

Wico, if you’re not aware of this fact, was an American-based arcade parts manufacturer. They went out of business around a decade ago but there are parts left over from their old production runs. Lizard Lick still carries some of their unused production stock for arcade machine collectors needing spares. According to LL, there’s still some manufacturer (Chinese?) producing knock-offs of their joysticks, too.

One of the products Wico made nearly 3 decades(!) ago was a line of joysticks. Whether they used actual arcade parts, I don’t know, but they were stylish for their time even if by today’s standards they were limited. These sticks had only two buttons, only one of which could be used at any time! On the base was a selector switch – use the big red button on the base itself, or the tiny white button on the top of the stick shaft!

There were two basic styles of these joysticks –

Bat Handle
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5043/1982wicojoystick.th.jpg

and Wico’s "Famous Red Ball Joystick"
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3905/famousredball1000j1p01.gif

Like today, I preferred the red ball even though over time the exposed metal shaft got tarnished by sweat… (I have high sweat acidity… it’s inherited… there’s nothing I can do about it!)

I had both of them basically because I bugged my parents to get me the red ball when they mistakenly bought me the bat handle. I must have used the red ball twenty times more often than the bat handle!

Even though the joysticks had standard Atari (2600) cords, I always used them on the Atari 800 computer system for its games instead of the 2600. I never liked the way they felt on the 2600 for some reason and preferred to stay with the Atari joysticks for that system.

I understand the joysticks were also manufactured with Amiga cords for that market, too…

A third version of this joystick line had interchangeable handles. You go swap the ball handle for bat handle and vice-versa depending on which you felt like using.

I had both joysticks through about 1991 when I finally got rid of the Atari computer system. By then, it was basically being used as a glorified (and extremely out-of-date) word processor and I was hardly playing any of the games on it. When the computer system finally went out the door and was donated, so were the joysticks!

Can’t say I really miss them, though. Today’s technology is so much better and frankly you can always “crank down”/mod joysticks or use restrictor gates to recapture the old arcade feel…

17

Yeah, it had pretty good components. I honestly haven’t put enough play into the yellow namco to compare the two. The best part about it was the kick ass metal case.

If I had to compare it to another joystick, probably the Hori Fighting Stick SS for Sega Saturn. Similar design but in a plastic shell. Only problem was terrible buttons. I think that one was identical to the Fighting Stick PS for Playstation.

18

I still own a few of those joysticks (both kinds), as well as a Wico “Boss”. I didn’t really use the boss one very often since the handle rotated freely and was pretty awkward - both the bat and ball top sticks were pretty good though. Ahh, good old Commodore 64 days…:bgrin:

19

not an actual pic but I have one of these packed away somewhere…

20

Namco Arcade Stick <3