I see Sanwa this, Sanwa that. Even a little Seimitsu this, Seimitsu that, and recently, Hayabusa courtesy of me. Buuuuuuut, check it. I played the other night on a iL. Shit felt good. Super snappy with a quick return to neutral. I tried very hard to get it to deflect and activate another direction but the damn thing refused to. Plus, they’re fairly quiet, and have a solid feeling when hitting their “edge” or whatever you want to call it.
Corners weren’t a problem either.
What’s all this non-sense about them being inaccurate pieces of shit? Is this because people read SlagCoin which makes no secret that it thinks “HAPP” style sticks are garbage?
I like iL, but now they’re considered niche arcade parts. Madcatz and Hori also produce all of there parts with Sanwa or Seimitsu parts so that really doesn’t help either.
iL/happs sticks are great. I would switch all my sticks to il/happ if they would fit in the case. They were perfect for marvel2. I hated the way sanwas felt the first time I tried to play on them. It felt so unresponsive compared to a il/happ/p360.
I grew up playing arcades with IL parts and to be honest we played pretty well with them, they are built like a tank and can hold up a lot of abuse from mashers.
I know a lot of people who prefer to play with IL parts than any japanese brands and I think the most hate here is for the size they required for the cases.
Hell, the case alone must be at least 3" height if you want to fit the stick and that means the case will be heavy.
The sanwa-boner is garbage. Those sticks try to be all things to all people, but in reality, different games and even play styles need different components. You don’t run a marathon in track spikes.
Also iL sticks are great for ppl who are heavy handed and really lean in to the stick. Though imho they are pretty useless unless mounted in a cabinet.
I’m very close to putting IL Eurosticks into my X-arcade to see what all the fuss is about. The nice chaps at arcadeworlduk always rave on about them.
I’m not good at beat em ups on any level (so what are you doing here bash?) but love the genre as I grew up with the first real boom in the late 80’s early 90’s.
I was able to use American sticks without a problem back in the heyday of arcade fighters. However, the cabinet I bought came loaded with Happ competition sticks, they were fucking terrible- couldn’t even get a quarter circle to come out. I assumed they were new ones since I’ve read that Happ parts went to shit a few years back. Went to a barcade here in Columbus a couple weeks ago, the sticks (which I’m assuming were Happ) on ST and the original KI were crap as well. Aren’t ill/Happ the same company now? Is there any difference in their ill labeled sticks? It’s possible that both of the Happ sticks from my cabinet had just been beaten to shit, and more than possible that was the case at the barcade, but I don’t remember ever coming across one that bad in the 90’s- usually one direction was troublesome at worst.
There are two distinct companies that make American style sticks. The one you’re most likely experiencing is Suzo-Happ whose base of operations is in China and whose quality is suspect. The other is Industries Lorenzo (iL) which is based in Spain and is the brand that the OP is touting.
iL and Happ are not the same at all.
Nowadays Happ products are made in China while iL in Europe, I believe the build quality is superior in iL’s case. I have in fact purchased a Mag-stick from them and it feels robust.
As for the lack of hype about iL parts, it’s unfortunate but good products don’t always gather the crowd. I have seen lots of complaints about the sanwa JLW even though it’s excellent, just the diagonals are small requiring some time to get used to, I guess people nowadays are impatient and want to rock right away with a stick that behaves no where near the JLF (which most of them started with).
I remember reading somewhere while back that iL designed and own the mold for the competition joysticks but I may be wrong here.
Either way, while they look the same, iL still uses Cherry switches whereas Suzo-Happ have replaced them with E-switches.
The only real negative thing I have to say about old Happ/iL parts is that they do need a lot of room compared to Japanese parts and you need a MAS-like case for them. Sure, you can put them in smaller cases but both the stick and buttons have a lot of tension compared to their Japanese brethren. They encourage a lot of forceful movements so you’ll need a case/stand that won’t move while you’re mashing away on a combo.
It’s all down to preference. John Choi has admitted in the past that he can’t adjust to Japanese parts because of his time with old school Happ parts.
The American style parts’ time has come and gone for mass-production.
The fact is that the home market is geared towards support of Japanese parts; it really is a Hori/Mad Catz world and they choose to go with Japanese parts because they’re the main game now.
The Japanese parts are still very, very good. I prefer at least the Japanese buttons over the American-style. I’ve hurt my fingers using American-style buttons in a straight-row layout so I would never go back to those… The closest to an optimal, all-around joystick I’ve found for personal use is a Japanese model. I honestly don’t see myself using American parts unless I ever get a cabinet or customized joystick case.
The only small company I’m aware of still equipping custom home arcade joysticks with American parts is MAS Systems. The only other company that’s done an American-style joystick recently was PDP with the last MK stick and it was by all account fitted with crappy quality imitations of Happ/iL parts. Qanba and most of the rest are solidly in the Japanese parts camp because that’s what sells in the market. The other alternative are the Korean brands but they’re most popular in Korea from what I gather. I don’t think the Korean parts are even as popular as the iL/Happ brand abroad – not outside of Asia anyway.
Videogame arcades have been gone for the better part of at least a decade now in most of the US and much of Europe from what I gather. It’s only going to be older guys from their mid-30’s onward (MY generation) that are going to care so much for American parts. Considering that a lot of these guys will spend money on shitty-quality <$2 button and ~$8 joystick Happ repro parts, I have to wonder sometimes how serious or knowledgeable about these things they are. When you are spending upwards of several hundred or several thousand dollars on a cabinet – pre-restoration or painting – and complain about buying $15-24 joysticks, I have to shake my head. You can’t even buy most wireless digital pads now for much less than $45!
I personally think it’s a pain to try to equip Japanese cabinets or home joystick cases with American/European or Korean parts. It’s an even bigger pain than most people want to go through trying to refit even non-universal Japanese joystick cases for non-JLF, non-OEM joystick parts! There are people who come in here with no manual skills or hand tool experience and you try to explain to them what’s involved with modding and you get a mental picture of their eyes rolling back into their heads because they can’t hack that very basic level of work or are too afraid to learn new manual skills. Never mind that they might have to invest money in decent-quality tools. Considering that most new people STILL come into Tech Talk without reading the basic FAQ’s/Stickies and refuse to educate themselves on the basics, I guess there shouldn’t be such a huge surprise there anymore.
I never liked the controller parts used in American arcades so it was no loss to get used to the Japanese pushbuttons (which are more comfortable to me) OR try a variety of Japanese joysticks before settling on the LS-32 and Hayabusa. I was never attached to American parts or very happy with the quality of joysticks used on older game systems before digital pads became standard equipment on the the Nintendo NES onward. Honestly, with the exception of MAS systems and its buying parts from the source, American parts vendors never became that seriously involved with providing parts for local joystick manufacture nor did they seem to care and see an alternate market there for making money. They were focused on the American arcade scene for as long as that was profitable for them. Those American companies all got out of arcade parts manufacturing by the end of the 1990s and are long gone now… iL is pretty much the last one of the non-Asian vendors that carries anything like the American arcade scene had. The home joystick market with quality parts seems to have been a very Japanese trend well before Americans got involved in the hobby in numbers. Even so, the number of “arcade-pro”/“quality” joystick owners in the West is a small raindrop in the bucket compared to the overall number of videogame players most of whom are very casual players or into FPS or the latest “money-making” gaming trend.
Im in my 40’s so me using anything other than IL would be crazy ha ha ha. I’ve tried the Japanese stick but they just don’t feel right. That’s why I was so happy when I was able to get a nubeytech stick off ebay. Hell I got 2 of them ($40.00 per stick) and switch out the sticks and buttons alone with pcb to ps360+. The only thing I do like about the Japanese sticks are the button layouts. american sticks layouts are bad but no one knew anything about ergonomics in the mid 80’s lol.
Happ parts before the move to China was re-branded IL parts. So the IL Competition was the original and the current Happ version is a knock off.
When Happ merged with Suzo, they broke their ties with IL and moved their own production to China.
The stick I used was very accurate. I did like 50 fireballs in a row without dropping. Played charge characters too, and had no problems using my corners and diagonals. The only thing I didn’t like about the stick was the large range of motion. The accuracy was perfect though, which is what I’ve always seen as the main reason people don’t use them anymore, that Sanwa is gdlk and American style sucks.
It’s been mentioned before, but I’ll throw my weight behind the argument that size is probably the critical factor here. I’m a Happs/IL guy, I’ve made a couple of MAS knock offs. But the convenience and looks of the TE make traveling with your weapon of choice easier, and your setup at home looking much nicer. Personally, I hate the JLF, it’s loose, feels extremely brittle, feels sloppy. But the JLW is an extremely nice stick, feels a lot like the old Happs and can fit in a modern case. I’ll always have a place in my heart for Happs/IL sticks, I’ll even keep one around, but theJLW remains my sick of choice as long as its around.
I have 2 IL Super 8 Ways just chillin’ in my garage, I really should build a case sometime. They came from my NeoGeo conversion I had from when I was 14 to a few years ago. I like them a lot but then again I also like Sanwa and Seimitsu sticks a lot.
I think you’re dealing with an optical p360 stick which were overall pretty reliable, but I dealt with many happ comps ( the cheaper switch based happ) in mods and builds from '98 to '12 and there were a lot of problems with their performance even before people got hip to japanese parts and happ started doing the china thing. Time for my yearly post…
The actuator is textured, so it would rub the microswitches down over time leading to the feeling of bad diagonals and unresponsive motions in general. I’m not sure if this is exclusive to cherrys or happ actuators, but i never liked the return on omrons to see if they would help since the plastic looks stronger on those. JLF’s usually only have to worry about the pivot wearing down, but that takes forever and only affects the return to neutral. Eating a jump in on older games was a pretty obvious sign of bad diagonals and unfortunately fatal.
Even before the move to china parts (i only recall the change cuz of black actuators and shittier plastic) I noticed a problem with uneven distances between the actuator and the individual switches when left neutral. That meant wildly inconsistent diagonals and qcfs. I’m always curious to know how many revisions IL went thru on the comp throughout the years cuz i’ve seen so many little variations on what were seemingly all happ era IL’s all with weird variances on the neutral actuator to switch distances.
Recently i bought a blue IL branded comp stick and button set and there are minor to major problems. The biggest problem had the switches not resting flush with the plunger even when snapped in all the way leading to a weird moon shaped dead zone in the button. I read some posts way back in the day of people having inconsistent performance on different colored buttons and we just assumed it had something to do with the colorings effect on the plastic (not an expert so no idea how stupid that concept is). I’ve seen so many different cherry designs that I even wonder how much that has to do with the overall fit into their respective bases. I’m curious how much this impacted peoples performance when switching to japanese parts and possibly getting more consistent 3p/3k (a major issue with the current blue IL’s i have even with a ghetto fix).
I can’t say for sure but i think all these little variable problems in american cab parts (and various non happ parts i’ve dealt with) led to the overall opinion of american stuff being crap. You just didn’t have as much inconsistency with the first part japanese stuff, and happ didn’t advertise their stuff going to shit.
p.s. @Moonchilde : Deflection on medium spring is cool! I used to do MK2 teleports with the deflection of down to up in the arcades.
