X-Arcade Stick

robotbebop

Does anybody have one? Is it as awesome as the site makes it out to be? If it's total crap how expensive/difficult is it to make your own?

I'm wanting to drop one into a MAME cabinet that I'm building later this year.

AnakinOU

I have one (the "Tank Stick"...2 sticks, trackball in between), and a separate standalone trackball. I'm definitely happy with it, and their customer service is excellent as well.

robotbebop

AnakinOU wrote: »

I have one (the "Tank Stick"...2 sticks, trackball in between), and a separate standalone trackball. I'm definitely happy with it, and their customer service is excellent as well.

What games do you play with it and how well does it work with those games?

lowlylowlycook

Guys, just be careful of the rules about emulators roms, etc. They are pretty strict in these parts.

Mugenmidget

It's not usually the best stick for fighting games, out of the box at least. You can swap out the sticks for something better (but by that point you might as well build something custom) or mess with the microswitches for better performance.

It works well with a lot of other arcade style games, I just don't think there's a lot of precision on the diagonals unless you mess with it. And it doesn't look like it'll get a 360 adapter any time soon, which rules out all those XBLA games.

Milky28

My friend and I looked at the X-Arcade when deciding what to use for our mame cab. It's ok, but doesn't use the real arcade components so it didn't really feel right on a cabinet. We ended up just making our own using buttons and sticks from Happ Controls. It really wasn't very hard at all, and it's rock solid.

Check out Build Your Own Arcade Controls if you haven't already, lots of links and tutorials. Another option is to look for a used SlikStik if you want a pre-built panel using arcade components. They are no longer in business, so it might be tough finding one.

Good luck on your cab, we had a blast making ours.

Technicality

If you have access to a drill and a saw, its way cheaper to build your own.

All you have to do is drill a bunch of holes in some wood and connect up the buttons. You can even get circuit boards that don't require any soldering if that bit worries you.

Pherael

I would recommend building your own over X-Arcade's. You'll end up with something less expensive in most cases and with better parts. A good site for information about this stuff is Shoryuken.

Serious_Scrub

Really, I would think the woodworking part would be much more daunting than the soldering part. There's that one place that makes a nice box for 60 or so dollars, but they are always backordered

acidlacedpenguin

I'm currently in the process of building an arcade stick. Just yesterday I completed construction of the box.

a sheet of 1/8th inch MDF and a sheet of 3/4inch MDF cost me a grand total of like $20 at kent, and that's probably enough to make 2 or three boxes.

the only difficulties I ran into were cutting the sheets because I don't have a table saw and cutting the mitre joints.

cutting the sheets I had to resort to a hand saw and a planer to straighten up my cuts afterwards. Cutting the mitre joints wasn't really all that difficult since my circular saw could do 45's easily, I just had to watch out to not cut off the end of the board. You could avoid mitre joints alltogether if you just want to do butt joints.

anyway I guess what I'm saying is that building your own arcade cabinet/stick shouldn't be that hard if a (power) tool like me can do it.

Useskaforevil

meh, if your just building it for fighters it might be cheaper to build your own, the hotrod is like $100 now, but joysticks and buttons with microswitches will cost you $40, and a board to wire them too (keyboard hacks suck IMe)will cost you another $30-40, so if you like the idea of DIY it make sense by a couple bucks. but for the tank stick at $200 a trackball will cost you 75-100, plus theres the cost of wood, and paint and whatnot. honestly to save $20 i wouldn't diy it unless space is an issue, the tank stick is freaking huge, and a case requires a good amount of work to mount it. if these prices aren't really current let me know, its been a little while since i bothered to diy controls.

krylon666

if you're already building a cab, just go ahead and make your own stick too. that way you can make sure you're using quality components. i don't have the info right next to me, but i used a real nice interface for the controllers/buttons. wired up all the buttons/sticks back to a interface that hooks up to the PC via USB, and there was no soldering. just screw down terminals on the interface and crimped terminal ends on the wires. heres the mine:

couldn't find a detail shot of the wiring, but i can take one later if you want

robotbebop

Looks like building my own is the best way to go Doesn't look all to hard to do. I can do the wiring stuff I guess, a friend of mine is going to do the actual wood work while I do the technical stuff. I also work for a graphic design company so I can probably get them to do a sweet-ass decal for the control panel.