Hi! Im back from outerspace to post about an arcade stick improvement/mod I made.
Sega Genesis continues to be my home console, and I love shooters but Im bad at them. My main complaint is control and as Im a grouchy old man who will emulate literally anything except sega genesis I decided to do some thing about it.
I had heard a rumor that old mechanical neogeo arcade sticks fit perfectly in the body of the Arcade power stick (which I am a fan of). Wanting the very best in control and hoping things hadn’t changed too much I purchased a very nice 4 way gated sanwa stick and set to work on my arcade stick.
Before (stock photo):
The ball would not unscrew, leading to desperate measures:
The stnadoffs were milimeters off the stock holes on the arcade stick mounting plate so I widened the stock holes. I was very hopeful it would just fit at this stage.
It still did not fit, the body was too deep!!!
So using a dremel I ground the insides down! It still did not fit!
So I removed the mounting plate and ground the standoff all the way flat and opened up the stick opening on the arcade stick body. Then after carefully prepping the surfaces by sanding them, souring them with a knife and wiping down with brake cleaner I attached the stick permanently with the strongest 2 part epoxy I could find.
The wires almost matched but had some colors that were different. the correct pinout was (not pictured) to match by color with purple matching green.
The finished product! I love how the dust disk fits the opening bezel perfectly.
The shaft was too long on bottom by a hair less than the thickness of the steel under plate so a hole had to be cut for clearance. So far the stick has not been an issue on flat surfaces and even directly on carpet.
I’ve used this stick extensively since. the diagonal gate makes playing Landstalker worlds easier as well as the shooter improvements I was hoping for.
Ive used this stick to beat Magical Drop 5 on PC on all difficulties (its a terribly flawed implementation of magical drop)
Maybe Ill do the 6 button power stick next.