I bought a new Fightstick.

A right of passage I feel for people who get remotely into fighting games is to buy/build a fightstick, mainly because they're really, really cool. The designs people create are sick, and the "contraptions" freaks build are, something to behold. Other than cool factor, investing in a fightstick sort of shows a level of commitment to playing fighters; though I say as I know several friends who have a cheapo stick catching dust somewhere in their room, oh well.

I wanna talk about the stick I built/customized, after years of using a crappy, uncustomized Mayflash F300, I made the upgrade to the F500 model by reccomendation, It doesn't feel as premium as I'd hope my next fightstick would be, and It's ultimately not too different from the former, but It's still a marked improvement. It's heftier, and has a compartment for the USB cable which is a fucking godsend, considering I had my USB on my F300 die on me twice.

Was very excited to finally mod a stick, It took like a week for everything to come in, and after 4 hours of thinking I fucked up horribly somewhere, she was finished, a bit of a mess with all the stickers under the plexiglass, but she's Lovely.

Modded with a Sanwa joystick and Sanwa buttons, Obviously they had to be Pink, I really like how the pink parts look with the black backdrop. I don't know If I really prefer Sanwa part to their contemporaries, but It's what I'm used to, I only really use them because It's what people online say is good, so I rolled with It. Maybe I should've used this as an oppurtunity to try Seimitsu parts. Sanwa buttons feel indistinguishable from the stock buttons that came with the stick frankly, but I never cared for button quality asmuch as I do for the joystick anyhow. Part's bought from Arcade Shock.

The art I used Is official Skullgirls art by Jorby Alano, I edited It to make it look good on my stick, the original is here. I didn't particularly want stick to have art from a fighting game funnily enough- I kind of wanted my stick to display my appreciation of another video game or an anime, but I couldn't make a design that looked good. Hopefully in however long It'll be until a get another, more premium stick, I can make the art myself. I'm still quite happy with the art though, I still love Skullgirls, and It has Umbrella who's one of my mains, and her sister, Parasoul, who I'd never actually touch in the game, but is really hot. Also, sort of wish I made the art brighter for the printing, done by Focus Attack

Stickers galore! I kind of hate stickers, mainly because I can never find a good place to put them, so I end up just hoarding a bunch and feeling weird about It. This stick finally gives me an excuse to use some I have though. "Born to Write" sticker is from a zine I bought last year, Squid Girl sticker came with a charm I bought, Nanako Dojima cutout on the top right because I want to remember what I fight for. Also shoutouts maerk.xyz for the Naomi Netboot sticker and the sticker of his OC, Naomi, I like them alot and It's nice to finally use em after all this time. He was also the reason I bought this fightstick.

Oh yeah, my favorite part about my stick is the Tager button, 1st button on the bottom rown, so glad I got It. It makes me really happy. It's placed there cause that's where I designate the Drive button in Blazblue Central Fiction. Perfect segway into explaining my control scheme for fighting games can be weird.

Traditionally, for Blazblue atleast, the button layout is as shown.

...I don't know where I adopted it, but I exclusively play Blazblue with the C button right next to the D, so the 2nd button on the bottom row. This is the general layout I use for all other 4 button fighting games too. I could never play a fighter with 3 attack buttons on the top row, I guess i like my fingers to flow in that sort of square button layout that I use? Just feels like a more natural flow compared to the above layout. Call me a freak or something, It's just what works for me.

In terms of actually using the stick, It's been working like a dream, no real complaints other than the fact I got the balltop for my joystick smaller than I would've liked (30mm vs 35mm, my usual) but I got used to It quickly. Aslong as I can do 360's comfortably, or a 1080 motion, as shown.

I don't know why, but It seems more and more people are playing/learning Blazblue, maybe It's cause modern fighting games have alot of suckiness about them. One person (from clip above) I was voice chatting with and we played til like 4am, It fucking rocked, I also played someone who was grinding for EVO, another person who was learning the game after mainly being a KoF player, and another who was burnt out on modern fighters. More people to play, hell yeah. Topic for another day maybe, but I stopped playing modern fighting games mainly cause I dislike patch culture- I'd rather play a game that "is" rather than what I/other people want It to be, that's probably why I like older fighters, like Blazblue!

I like sticks cause of the substantiality and tactile/comfortable feeling, but Fightsticks don't make you improve at fighters for the record. Some people have switched to hitbox type controllers or are still trucking with a Dualshock 4 somehow, aslong as they're still playing fighting games and learning, that's all that matters right?

Interested in fightsticks?

I reccomend chastetiddy's Arcade Stick 101: complete guide for buying or building a fightstick, lots of resources.

For a starter fightstick, I reccomend the Mayflash F300, while I called it crappy, it did me well for a long time, It's very affordable for what it is (even more if you look on eBay) and is essentially a gateway stick if you wanna feel out a fightstick but not commit too much money towards one, though there are better gateway options if you think you can stand to spend more money (detailed in the 101 doc.)

If your interested in seeing cool fightstick designs I reccomend viewing r/fightsticks, It's the only subreddit I peruse sometimes, maybe It's the only good subreddit (oxymoron)

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