Get ready

» Written on July 23, 2008 at 12:38 AM «

For the next battle. It has arrived.

Play-asia recently had a 25% off everything (in-stock, that is) sale for the past week or so, and while scanning through the catalogs, I noticed a real nice steal for a Mayflash fighting stick. Shitty parts, shitty feel, but wonderful price. I dallied, though, and put off the purchase to the morrow.

On the morrow, such a purchase would no longer be possible. Fie! My flames stoked, I renewed the search for good deals and extravagant purchases. 6 days on, a modestly-sized parcel arrives at my front door, beckoning.

Now, I do seem to be spending quite a bit of dough on seemingly needless items as of late: first was the PS3 and the 24-inch to go with it (not to mention the starter library of titles), then came another controller just in case I ever managed to get along with another human being, and now this.

As such, I feel a little backstory is necessary.

I’ve been dreaming about buying an arcade stick ever since I got my Dreamcast back in ’99 along with Marvel VS Capcom. Back then, the real deal was still all about Sonic Adventure, though, so I suffered the blisters that came from using the DC’s atrocious directional pad.

Then the PS2 came along and crushed my Dreamcast. It did more than that, though: it also crushed my dreams. I kind of swore off consoles for like, ever after that. Until the PS3, obviously, and even then only after carefully considering various aspects of the game industry’s current state.

So, now, it is done. 51.19 SGD later, I have a Hori Fighting Stick 3, arguably one of the better sticks for the PS3 right now, but also one of the worse ones in terms of parts and build quality.

Honestly, though, I am ashamed for once: I had assumed that, like its bigger and more expensive brother, the Real Arcade Pro 3, the HFS3 would also be using a Sanwa stick and buttons; imagine my surprise when I discovered that this was not the case after working the stick for a while. It responds well enough (it damn well better!), but overlooking this little detail kind of bugs me, especially since I pride myself on actually doing my goddamn homework.

I don’t really see the difference in buttons, though (although I prefer the hyper-sensitive Japanese style buttons as compared to Happ’s ‘clicky’ ones) since I am a firm believer in the philosophy of dealing more damage through the actual pressure you use on your attacks, so the HFS3′s buttons were exactly what I was looking for.

I do find their placement kind of odd, though; I had to reconfigure Virtua Fighter 5 in order to get a better feel for it. I can only imagine the horror that awaits me when I finally get my hands on Tekken 6.

The stick, to me, is the most important of controls in the arcade, and the Hori stick delivers in terms of responsiveness. Since I don’t forsee myself growing Superman biceps anytime soon, I’m not that worried about ripping the stick off its mounts, but I was pleased to note that it is a free-floating stick: the stick can be twisted without unscrewing the ball top. Some sticks I’ve used have had the ball tops come right off after doing several quarter circle forwards, or worse, 360 spins.

It does use a square gate, which I suppose is the standard for Japanese arcades, but I’m more of a circle gate fan, although for directional based fighters I’d imagine it would work well enough. So far my experience with it in Virtua Fighter 5 has not proved otherwise.

Believe me, I’d love to talk more about the stick, but I need to wake up at 4 a.m.. today to draw my M-16 rifle in preparation for range practice. Don’t ask. I’ll elaborate when I’m not dead tired, my eyes being kept open only by the promise of watching Aoi pull off yet another Aikido throw, exposing her gorgeous figure for all.

P.S. WordPress 2.6 now allows captions in the images I post. Pretty neat addition, seeing as I was too lazy to code the necessary styles myself.

Search

Extended Life

On the tubes

• Twitter
• Last.fm
• My T-shirts
• Flickr
• deviantART
• Webshots

Archives

By date

• January 2012 (2)
• December 2011 (2)
• November 2011 (2)
• September 2011 (1)
• June 2011 (1)
• May 2011 (1)

By category

• Rants (179)
• Design (80)
• Photography (55)
• Technology (44)
• Updates (32)
• Events (24)

View all