About 3-4 years ago I bought my first fight stick, the Qanba Q4. Still serves me to this day. When I first bought it of course, it had the square restrictor gate which I immediately replaced with an octagonal. A lot of people I’ve talked to have also done this and prefer the octagonal. I understand the benefit of the square gate for people who use charge characters or who generally like it better, but am I wrong to think that having the standard be octagonal would be better?
It’s mostly preference but there are some legitimate reasons to use square. Look at devs post.
Square has been the standard for like 30+ years now (Outside of American sticks which didnt really have gates like that). Octogon games are relatively new and probably would never been found on an arcade cabinet. Square is standard because it IS the standard
He didn’t get his shit pushed in for posting in the wrong forum?
Wtf SRK
Don’t be such a square
w0rd
Besides this belonging in a Tech Talk Thread, but they had a billion of these.
No one in Tech Talk would want this thread ether.
First off Square Gates existed since day one.
Before arcade sticks did 8 way directional action, joysticks were only 4 ways (4 directions) some Joysticks were only 2 way.
A 4 way stick as a single switch located at each location the actuator moves to.
The easiest way to accomplish this was place the switches in a cross shape.
Sometimes the diagonal could case an erroneous input ether doing nothing or even crashing the game.
8 way joysticks didn’t come till later when the hardware can take and understand that 2 near by switches being it at the same time equals a diagonal input (like UP + Right)
The easy way to move forward in terms of design (and because arcade part owners like to be cheap and reuse parts) was to rotate that square gate 45 degrees allowing for 8 way play.
Even “American” style joysticks have a gate, instead of being it’s own part, the gate is formed by the switches themselves.
Octagonal gates are used by scrubs who don’t know how to do a hadoken.
Square Gates are the number 1 recommended gates for new players and it is the preferred gate to be used by pros like Daigo and Tokido.
Japanese sticks were designed with square gate in mind, the octogate is an add on that it changes the feel but it works exactly the same. My execution wasn’t improving just for using the octagonal gate that’s why I dropped it along time ago. If you want a better 8 way feel you better off going something like happ IMO.
I find what helps for square gates is to make L-Shape movements.
I know for some this is a conceptual challenge,
but making a L Shape movement instead of circular movements will improve your execution in your game play.
I played on an old Pac Man cab recently and it had a gate shaped like +. I also played on a Donkey Kong cab and it had a diamond shape (which is technically a square rotated 45 degrees).
I play on a square gate. I think I have an octagon lying around somewhere that I tried and didn’t like as much. To each his own, though.
Also the aftermarket round gates (and to a lesser extent octagonal gates) can if you not careful and grind the gate ruin an actuator very quickly and put plastic dust everywhere (including inside of switches).
And the next thing I know someone with a round gate complains their left Input don’t work and their actuator looks like it got chewed by a rodent.
Octo gate is for the real ones…square for the sheep.
i’ve tried both. i found that octagonal gates are actually harder to hit diagonals for some reason. maybe it’s better for 360 moves but square provides you with a sense of exact stick position and some other tricks like going from down-right to up-right very easily for example.
I was told to try the square gate out before changing to octo, and honestly now I can’t imagine playing anything except square =/
I agree with OP. I change all my sticks to octo and agree it should be the new standard. I use shotos a lot and Birdie in SF5 and just prefer the feel of the octo gate. I feel trapped when using a square gate. Just my opinion though.
Trapped!? The square gate has more room (i.e., it’s less restrictive) to move the stick around than the octagonal gate! o_O
Mathematically what you are saying makes no sense.
You have physically less space to hit the corners on a Octagon gate than you would with a square.
Only thing the octagonal gates lets you do is feel around for each direction, as everything feels the same.
Square gates you have to conceptualize how a L -shape movement equals to a quarter circle input.
You are still hitting Down, Down Right, and Right with both gates. The Square gate is the only one that gives you full access to the whole range of movement.
The Octagonal gate allows you to be sloppy and feel around. Feeling around also does not work when you are at neutral. And you can easily miss corners.
Square Gate only requires you to realize it’s a square gate and adjust accordingly.
I never miss a block with square gate like down block, never!.
if you plan to go to japan to play at the arcades you better get used to square gate.
that said, WTF?! is wrong with sanwa JLW, like what in the hell was the purpose of that stick, it’s horrible
try to play KOF98 with that thing, it will make you hate sanwa and kof forever. It just doesn’t work
What about a square gate with small notches at up, down, left, and right? It’d basically just be a square gate, but you could actually feel the 4 directions.
wouldnt that cause the switches to be pressed further then they were intended?