Why no iL stick love?

Tech Talk
41

Straight button layout is pure ass. If only iL Comps actuated in the center rather than off center they would be the best buttons on the market aside from their length and color selections. Hands down. Nothing beats a mechanical clicky feedback.

Things I really liked about the iL Eurostick was how snappy it was and how well it centered. Finding corners was way easier than I expected, that square actuator design is really unique and the stick certainly feels that way. I really thought I’d have problems with corners but that wasn’t the issue. The one major drawback for me was how large the movements had to be to use the stick. In that design aspect, Japanese sticks are far superior.

There is one thing Japanese sticks could be inspired from iL, the springs are simply too wimpy. I know we have spring options these days and them shits feel delicious, but man, if only Japanese sticks came stock like that. The other is, well, I kind of like how solid the stick feels when the actuator hits the switch or whatever. I like the square actuator, it’s a really interesting feel to the stick, and it has an odd “oomph” that Japanese sticks don’t have when you hit the gates.

Not trying to start any flaming and I’m not liking the direction this thread is starting to go, personal attacks really need to get the fuck out. @rcaido‌ this means you bro. I simply want to discuss the positive merits of “American” iL style sticks in the face of an over all consensus that they suck ass, not go through yet another internet flame war. Too much of that shit.

42

By default they take none of those joysticks. Those arcade stick cases still needed to be modded in some way.
the Hori 1,2,3 and EX has enough depth to house some of these larger joysticks, but you still need to modify or replace the top panel.

43

That’s why it’s nice to have a VLX… Currently working on getting a SUZO inductive up and running in mine. I can even lower the suzo to get official mounting hight with custom jap shaft.

As far as IL love? Come on, we all loved IL back in the day when it was all we played on in the arcades. :slight_smile:

44

I don’t think I ever played on a Eurostick before though. All I remember is the ones that had no corners, and Eurostick does. I was pleasantly surprised I guess, I was expecting pure shit from what I’ve read and what I recall using in busted ass arcades, lol.

45

edit -nevermind.

46

I’m in my 40s now too, and remember playing on the ‘US’ style bat-top sticks and mostly broken buttons (cross-handed on the unused left hand buttons FTW!). They were light years ahead of the Atari 2600 & Competition Pros we used at home, but after using a Japanese stick I couldn’t go back. Same with straight layouts.

I can see why older players swear by them, though, and do get a nostalgic rush every time I see a MAS stick!

My memory could well be playing tricks, but I seem to recall - in the UK at least - that a lot of the generic 10p stand-up cabs (Bubble Bobble, Gunsmoke, that kind of thing) had Japanese ‘lollipop’ sticks with straight US-style concave buttons. Was that a thing, or have I got it muddled up somewhere in the fog of age?

47

Actually I was talking about the joysticks, not the buttons. What did they normally use?

48

I HATED the American parts in the arcade, period… the controls are part of the reason I never really played much in arcades after 1990! Broken-feeling joysticks and very uncomfortable buttons with pain-inducing straight layouts did not make me want to spend money in arcades. I spent a lot more money in arcades in the 1980s. There’s a night-and-day difference between the ergonomic feel of the Viewlix or Astrocade control layouts available today and the crap we were given in the 1990s to play Street Fighter 2 on!

Lollipop sticks are not a Japan-only thing. Wico and other American companies did produce arcade control levers that did incorporate balltop handles in the 1980s at the very least. My first pro-level joystick (or one made by an American arcade parts manufacture) was a Wico redball ‘lollipop’ joystick that had Atari inputs. That was back about 1981 I think… So long as you don’t mind being restricted to using one button, you could use it on any of the 8-bit Atari computers, the Atari 2600/7800, Commodore 64, and Sega Genesis. (On reflection, that Wico joystick and the bat handle model I owned were AWFUL joysticks and unsuitable for fighting games. LOL There’s no way those old Wico designs are responsive enough for fighting games. The closest thing to a fighting game that I ever used it for was some lousy 8-bit Atari computer karate game that’s nothing like SF2 let alone Pit Fighter!)
You pretty much couldn’t play Pac-Man or Donkey Kong in the US without a lollipop stick handle – and those were for the most part equipped with American-produced parts. I think Wico produced the joysticks for a huge part of the American cabinet run of Pac-Man (which was licensed from Namco by Bally/Midway, developer/maker of Defender and later Cruisin’ USA and Mortal Kombat). Bat handles seemed to be more popular on later-run arcade games – mostly in the 1990s as I can remember – and generally fighting games at that, too.
As far as arcade cabinets go, in general the most popular arcade games of the late 1970s and early 1980s had far higher production runs than most of the games from the mid-1980s onward did. 100k+ runs were recorded for Pac-Man… It’s thought to be as high as at least 250k+ with bootlegs and cocktails totaled in… I’ve never seen Pac-Man arcade machine of any kind that DIDN’T use a lollipop control lever!
Donkey Kong’s production run was at least 80,000 machines. Again, another game I never saw without a lollipop joystick in the US.
Street Fighter 2, btw, according to a list here => http://www.brentradio.com/ProductionNumbers.htm, is the only arcade machine he knows to break 30k production after 1984…

As far as mixing and matching brand parts are concerned, people do it here all the time within the Japanese spectrum. I use mixes of Seimitsu LS-32’s with Sanwa buttons on my joystick cases. Other people do the reverse with JLF’s and Seimitsu buttons. The only production joysticks I’ve seen made with mixed manufacturer parts pre-installed were the Mad Catz Crown joystick/Sanwa Button Fight Sticks, MAS controllers with Happ joysticks and Sanwa buttons, and a Hori HRAP with a Seimitsu LS-32-01 control stick and mix of Sanwa AND Seimitsu buttons that got cancelled… that HRAP never went past prototype mock-up!
With the exception of the advertised and cancelled limited edition HRAP, Hori sticks to one manufacturer or the other in production. They favor Sanwa heavily with very low production numbers of HRAP’s with Seimitsu parts. That cancelled mixed-part HRAP was a one-of-a-kind deal that I don’t think they’re going to repeat… a lot of us think they’re going to use their own Kuro and Hayabusa parts from here on out with the HRAP’s at any rate after this year…

49

Lots of people here being full of shit & elitist…Acting like you’re an adult during the 80’s & early 90s…You guys were kids, none of you knew what the fuck was a sanwa back then or had various of option to choose what stick to compare it too. I wouldn’t be surprise if you guys were still in your dad’s ball sac & not born yet. How can you hate something that was the real deal at the arcades. Pretty much all Fighter at the arcades were stock w/ american parts. This was the norm for top & casual players.

50

Exactly, they didnt know better!

51

There nothing American about American style parts.

52

Because not everyone here lived and grew up in America. Heck, growing up in Asia, I’ve been playing on Japanese sticks all my life, the only time I ever got to play on an American stick was whenever I would fly over to NorCal to visit my relatives. Therefore, American style sticks and buttons make no sense to me whatsoever.

53

I deleted this post earlier because it was too long causing some more of that ridiculous wall of text, but I am disturbed by rcaido’s comment. For one, Not everyone here are from the US. (I for one, grew up in the philippines and didn’t move here until 2007). I can honestly say, I was exposed to a different arcade environment than most Americans.

I am gonna sound very biased. you will not agree with what i have to say.
But to answer the thread title question, coming from me and my opinion only of course:

I didn’t grow up in the US. I was never exposed to US-style arcades and arcade cabinets up until 2008. Where I grew up, all we had were candy cabs, sega astros, neo mvs’s, etc. 99% of the time, equipped with japanese parts. you get the occasional chinese knock-off button, but that’s about it.

Do i think iL’s suck ass? No. I think they do what they do okay. But do I hate them? yes. very.
At GameGuys over here are Pasadena, there’s a ThirdStrike cab which has iL parts in it. I love playing on the cab, but I feel handicapped greatly when using them, I’m not used to it, probably never will. I dislike matte bat tops., I dislike the distinctively heavier spring bounce.

Everyone complains about “el stock Sanwa JLF’s are sloppy dicks yo, them fuckas gotta be tighter springed octo gate like BAMF”, (yes, this is a thing around here in Houston, every local player who i’ve modded sticks for greatly prefer octogate JLF’s with 2lb spring, and you can’t call them out on that, they play really well on that.)

Well, i’m the reverse, I like to keep it stock most of the time, because it feels right for me. It’s what I am familiar with. Yes, i will call out the nostalgia goggles on this one too, most guys in this thread are calling the OG card, so let’s do that. Well OG for me was playing on a Blast City cab at an arcade inside a mall in Manila back in high school.

@d3v back me up here, when you go to a TimeZone or Quantum (some of the popular arcade houses in Manila), what do you see? freakin sega cabs. What are the sticks? mostly likely JLF. That was the case back in 2002 when i started going to arcades more, I don’t know how things are these days, but that is probably still the case now.

You see guys, the way I see it, like many things, this joystick preference shit is a “cultural” thing almost. We all have had different experiences. Either the older people here who grinded it on american cabs or the newer younger guys who’s first experience with sticks was a TE.

I guess, I just wanna say an excuse for us who greatly prefer japanese sticks. I’ve got ‘no love’ for iL’s, but i don’t discredit it as a piece of hardware, i’m sure it’s just as good as any joystick out there, it’s just not for me. those were my reasons, it could be different for others, but yeah.

Nobody is stopping anyone for playing on what they like, I don’t get the need for validation (that’s what I feel) on their own setups/preferences.

There is valid reason for my dislike, and you don’t have to hate me for it. I might be from a younger generation or different country, but it doesn’t mean I can only have faulty opinions. my taste has a solid reasoning behind it. now don’t go hating on anyone that feels the same way I do. This is why “american parts” get no love from me, it’s simply because it is foreign to what I’ve known for years beforehand. Im sure most americans feel the same way about sanwas/seimitsu.

I sometimes play on Suzo500/, i have one around here, fully modded with kowal’s custom gear on it (shaft, spacer) and seimitsu springs, as well as lighter omron switches (from bemani buttons). What I noticed was, I was going out of my way to make it feel like a Japanese stick. what’s the point? that’s not gonna get me laid.

54

I first played Street Fighter on Super Nintendo and, shortly after, Genesis. The first time I ever saw it in a cabinet was at our local Laundromat where there was a Championship Edition cab. I fell in love. I pissed my mom off so much begging for quarters just to get another set in. That cab also ended up being the best condition Street Fighter cab that I ever saw until much later in life. I guess you could say that is my fondest memory of American style parts (which I agree is a bit of a misnomer). After the Laundromat closed down and was no more it was just one shit cab after another. Some of the cabs that I have seen have made me want to cry in my area. Funny thing is, I think they would be much more beat down if not completely non functioning if they had today’s common Jap parts installed (excluding, maybe, the JLW) and the owner’s same lack of desire ability to keep them in good working order.

55

I grew up in asia myself, i was too young to give a fuck what stick was used. I go to the arcade played whatever parts was used. I wasn’t like you know this is awkward, im not going to the arcades anymore bullshit. These guys are full of shit to say they knew what was up back then. Im already in my late 30s i didn’t know any better back then.

If you want to compare sticks now saying japanese is superior then yeah i can understand that, but trying to say the sticks at the arcade which was the norm back then & saying it was a piece of shit, just doesn’t fly.

56

Still JLFs and some Seimitsu sticks. Although I do know where to find cabs with Fantas as well as JLWs.

This. Everyone has their preferences, either due to how they grew up, or their own experiences.

My first experience with an American stick was in '94 and the difference in it (as well as the stand up cab) was my first introduction to this whole US/Eurp vs. Japanese thing. So I have been somewhat aware about this for some time. Talking to some of the people at the local arcades here who did know stuff about the industry (one operator here used to import US parts for their makeshift MK and KI cabs) only confirmed my experiences that the US played on different parts than those I was used to.

57

I grew up in the US, I played arcade machines in the 80s and 90s,
I like the old Wico and Suzo parts, Happ and IL on the other hand felt awful to me.

This isn’t a hate on American style parts, I just do not like the designs IL first introduced in the late 80s.
Those early american style Street fighter cabs aren’t comfortable for me to play on. And everyone I seen is in a sad state of disrepair.

@rcaido no one (except me) is going to Bash you for liking IL/Happ but you got to respect other peoples opinions.

58

I remember playing Yi Er Kung fu at Pinball Pete’s in East Lansing, Michigan when it first came out. I remember standing in lines with my quarters up in the monitor bezel waiting to play Double Dragon and (my favorite game of all time) 720 degrees, all when they first came out. I was young, between 8-12 for those games. I also remember being stationed in Korea in '97 so I’ve been playing on both Happs/IL and Japanese parts for a long time. My favorite home stick I’ve ever owned was the Agetec green goblin, probably as much because the games and the system, but also because I liked the feel. But I will say there is some nostalgia for old school Happs parts and I was always envious of my buddy with the dual multi-console Mas sticks and would swear I played better on them. It really is preference. I like the feel of Happs/IL, but I appreciate the portability of Sanwa sticks. I do feel that they are loose and feel…just brittle. Eh, just rambling, ignore the old man.

59

Lol y’all kray.

Sanwa suk azz

Seimitsu suk azz

iL suk azz

Happ is suk azz

Crown suk azz

Only Suzo is GOD.

They don’t make buttons so i don’t use. (Only joystick i use only)

60

I’ll do you better…

  1. I’m older than rcaido… I’m in the same age range as Graymalkin.
  2. I’ve played with probably at least a dozen types of joysticks. Fact is I still find the Japanese product – Seimitsu and Hori pro-product at any rate – more comfortable than the European and American designs I played with. That includes Wico and Happ product for sure.
    I didn’t like the American joystick controllers when they were new (before some of you were even born), don’t like them that much now.

Sorry if some of you can’t appreciate a difference of opinion!
That does not make me a poser, retard, or whatever… it just means some people can’t accept a difference of opinion or the fact some of us never liked the “home product” much at all.

The first quality joysticks made for home play probably appeared in Japan. The first one with arcade parts was probably that SNES joystick Markman mentioned many months ago. The first arcade-quality joysticks I ever saw for a home system were Neo Geo joysticks somebody brought along with a Neo Geo AES (the cartridge based home console) system at Anime Expo '94!

  1. I’ve got my opinion, some of you have differing opinions… fact is, at the end of the day, these are just games and should be at the bottom of importance for most people.
    Nobody should really care that much… play with what’s comfortable for you. That’s the closest to a universal “correct answer” on a topic that’s politically incorrect to begin with.
    If you get steamed over something as unimportant as this, you need to find a new hobby…