Remember the Atari 2600 Joystick? It was a right handed stick/left handed fire. Lots of 2 player games had right stick left fire. Most non-competitive games (1 player at a time) had buttons on both sides and you chose your side. In that case, I chose the right hand. When the NES came out, I was finger-typing while resting the pad on the floor. This was easiest because playing with thumbs was awkward and finger typing was like typing on a computer, or pressing buttons. When they include shoulder buttons, that’s when I’m forced to use thumbs on a Joypad.
When my dad bought me an NES Advantage, I complained because a left handed jostick was awkward. The only reason left handed sticks (right fire) are more common is because they mirror NES Pads, and because NES was the most dominant system in history, it just carried over to Street Fighter. If Atari had been the dominant force after 1985, the lefties would be complaining, but someone would cater to their market. The last right handed stick I’ve seen was for the 7800 and Sega Master System.
For Dreamcast and Playstation 1 and 2 fighting games, I might recommend an Alloy Stick for DC or Shadow Blade for PS1/2 It lets you program west to be east, east to be west, north to be south, south to be north and rearrnage the buttons so punches are the (what was) bottom row, kicks on the top (Don’t switch left to right orientation of buttons) rotate the joystick 180 degrees, and voila, right handed joystick. Punches are now upper buttons, kicks are lower buttons, and lights are still index finger, middles middle finger and heavy’s ring finger. There’s only one problem. IF you use your hole hand to press buttons, the left hand is “backcocked” placing your wrist at an unnatural angle. IF it’s true that you plan an offense and react as defense, then since your buttons are offense, you can either reprogram the buttons, so that the upper left button and lower right button are ignored and the contour would flow better for right handers, or if you’ve finger typed like my NES joypad, you can do that too.
As for muscle memory, since I played Street Fighter for the Genesis and Saturn, my finger typing made me left handed in those games, but the physical stick is right handed. I won a decent number of matches with my right handed stick. But one day, when my stick didn’t work, I had to adapt to a left handed stick (right fire). Playing a character I never played in SF4, Rose (I haven’t bothered playing the 1up vs cpu mode before to earn the extra fighters.) i found her best move was the soul throw, which is a dragon punch motion, and believe it or not, I pulled off enough left handed soul throws that I beat that opponent. Surprised both of us. (By the way, we were playing random vs random, on a machine that has the extra fighters, which explains how I got Rose)
I guess I’m one of the few ambidextrous Street Fighters. I prefer my right handed joystick, but can deal with the left. Tomorrow, I’ll write about a product that will let people flirt with right handed fighting, but if they don’t like it, should have a decent left handed stick. This is designed to be a mass market stick if mass produced. One hint is that I cannibalized a Shadow Blade to see if I can make universal ambidextrous stick with design good for both hands. See you tomorrow.
