It’s the paddles I’d miss
I’m not going back to no paddles
I just got the one I ordered and gonna say it is exactly as cheap as you’d think based on the price. Going to open it up in a bit.
There’s almost no tactility to any of the inputs - the face buttons are linear keyswitches, the triggers are hall effect with very light springs, and the microswitches on the dpad are as slight as you can imagine.
So, maybe good for @Brooks but don’t y’all do another Retroid Pocket here
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It turns out Sanwa’s green clashes HORRIBLY with Hori/Xbox 360 green at least on this fight stick. It’s kinda hard to tell in the photo, but this is gnarly. Also, I nicked a spot just below the RT button with my dremel (luckily I didn’t take off a finger). Got the buttons in and stopped for the day at soldering them to the PCB. This is gonna be a long road.
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the face button switches are Kailh, specifically these:
Unfortunately these feel much worse than Kailh’s regular BOX reds - scratchy with very loud pinging from the spring
don’t buy this:
- totally unacceptable play in triggers - no lateral retention mechanism so they freely scratch against the case
- dpad is a floating design but very fragile (spring and the cross/plunger don’t inspire confidence) and without the NGPC-style clicky feedback you’d expect. it’s still tactile, i guess, but these are not that kind of microswitch. the end result is less tactile than a membrane design like the xbox pad.
- the casing is dollar store ABS with a thin veneer of texturing that scuffed white from my nylon pry tool.
nice things, tho:
- analog sticks feel great, kind of a midpoint between the fully rubberized DS4 and the knurled plastic of the xbox.
- it feels like the steam controller (of all things…) in the hand. your thumbs “fall” into place.
- honestly $30 for a PCB to put MX switches in a pad with bluetooth and USB-C isn’t a bad deal if you use it as a modding platform
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why has this world of boutique everything still not replicated the NGPC click stick.
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we exist to suffer
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I have completed this mod. It took me way more hours than I am willing to admit.
It actually looks a lot better with the ball top in place.
I like the finished product, but I’m not sure if the labor was worth it.
The guide said to break those contacts on the Sanwa PCB like this:
That didn’t work out for me at all. I had all sorts of strange grounding issues until I just sawed the PCB into four pieces so the microswitches were all fully separated.
If I press on the stick too hard it still rubs on the base! 
Guess I’ll open it up and grind at it some more another day.
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using the older N30 arcade stick by 8bitdo (thanks doolittle). quick aside for felix: i don’t think they are taking anything out of the new one, judging by the fact this one has the same physical switches and layout but still has all the usual 8bitdo compatibility (incl. android, mac). the newer arcade stick i linked above supports their remapping software and this one doesn’t, but it looks like all the different input modes incl. x-input/d-input have different defaults so you can usually find a workable one if the game you’re in doesn’t support remapping (esp. relevant when using retro receivers). also their button layout on this one doesn’t really make a ton of sense to me - RT/R2 and LB/L1 should be swapped (edit actually it’s a little more complicated than that to fix it, idg this arrange really). this would yield a correct 6-button arcade layout when given e.g. ye olde default SNES street fighter 2 controls. you can’t get that with the way things are now. at any rate it’s a decent stick, i’m having an absolute riot playing sagaia and space invaders '91 on my genesis with this thing
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memories of everyone moaning about how bad the stock ex2 was during vf5 ver. b and the early days of sf4 when nobody could find a madcatz
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Congrats on completing this mod. I remember my struggle with the EX2 years ago. To add insult to injury the 2nd PCB for the 4 end buttons died on me after a couple of months.
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I fully expect the PCB or the daughterboard to crap out down the line. When it does, I’ll probably get one of these Brook Universal Fighting Boards or rip the PCB out of my wired 360 controller that has stick drift.
started gathering all the bits and pieces for these various button mods i’m keen on
just want flawless inputs
just want to not fuck up any more
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I’m not sure I’m sold on octagonal gates. I think? this is the first time I’ve used one. I might switch it out for the square gate that came with my Sanwa joystick.
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I grew up playing in American arcades in the 80s/90s and spent a lot of time playing SF2 Hyperfighting at a friend’s house on an unmodified cabinet throughout the aughts. We never knew anything of octo gates or ball tops I actually do like ball tops and convex buttons, but octo gates are doing me a confuse.
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IIRC the wiring is very clean if it’s a matter of swapping the buttons altogether
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mm so the issue is complicated and weird
i have multiple uses for this stick, with varying levels of fitness
- on windows - this will basically never be an issue as it can be completely remapped with software
- with 8bitdo retro receivers (genesis/snes) - you’re stuck with default layouts (there are a few different ones you can use based on which input mode you’re in, but there’s no way to get specific layouts - e.g. if you want ABC across the first 3 on the bottom on genesis you’re SOL because none of the defaults do that)
- with brook wingman sd - this works great on dreamcast - direct mapping to the printed buttons and there’s an alternate arcade stick mode on dreamcast which maps perfectly so the capcom/snk stuff all works without additional configuration. however, on saturn the mapping i mentioned (as an aside, the actual fix would be rotate the four rightmost buttons each by one place counter-clockwise) is a problem, as you get
X Y C Z
A B R L
and you can’t remap with the wingman SD because the stick uses a weird shortcut for the switch home button which the brook wingman needs to use as part of another weird shortcut. not compatible, therefore you can’t remap buttons with this combination
incidentally, the newer 8bitdo stick would solve both of my issues - their “ultimate” remapping software allows you to save remap profiles, and it has a dedicated home button so i’d be able to use the brook remapping as well
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