Confessions of a "Joystick Builder"

Hi,
I'm new here, and I would like to get some stuff off my chest /sarcasm.

Yo! What's up dudes.

Man, I've been meaning to offload some crap for the longest time. If you haven't heard of me, well, I'm first and foremost a SEGA fan, then an AM2 fan, then a VF fan. In that order.

I love VF, from VF on the Saturn (original with bundle), to the current FS; and even though I've not posted in a while, I've been lurking and keeping up with the scene... just not as obsessively as the early to mid 2000's.

Most know me as the "joystick guy," and IT KILLS ME THAT SOME OF THE STICKS WE SEE TODAY ARE SO SIMILAR TO THE ONES I BUILT BACK IN THE DAY. I don't know if it's coincidence, but I swear... man, I wanted to get that off my chest, feels great!

BTW, if you guys want me to update the Joystick Builder website... or if Myke wants to host it here on VFDC... LMK.

Anyways, if you want to know the story of how SANWA got into the psyche of the typical stick head.... read on.

My first exposure to online gaming news was back in 1996, on my Netlink on Saturn... using Concentric ISP which Sega promoted. Soon discovered sites like HardcoreGaming.com, which I used to write for. TK's Saturn Page and whatnot. Learned HTML on the internet off my Saturn. Then soon learned photoshop on the PC and did the design of hardcoregaming. Man, the memories are flooding back. Soon after, started game-411.com with Travis Poole, a friend from hardcoregaming. We did reviews and news and actually worked with some major gaming companies. The site eventually had to shut due the time requirements... I moved from Hawaii to Arizona to attend school in the electronics field (DeVry... don't laugh please). This was a major reason I didn't have the time to update and keep the site going.

While in Arizona, VF4 was released and naturally, had to come to VFDC for the latest news. I remember watching the live feed of Kakutou Shinseiki 2 and getting a pretty good recording of the feed... it was only one that had the entire 3-4 hours. Another thing I remember was being inspired to make my own joystick when a member called Llanfair made his own and this is where the inspiration started.

Of course, I had to do research. I was gonna use the US standard Happ parts, but I decided I wanted the joystick parts on the real VF4 cabinets. It took a ton of research, but I found out they were Sanwa arcade parts, and studying the parts on the Sanwa Japanese site. I was stoked, really STOKED, when I got an email reply from a Sanwa rep. This was when Sanwa was a word not really tossed around now in the joystick circles.

And I built this monstrosity:


You can see some of the other sticks I was working with at the time. The blue one is off a Namco PS1 stick that I moded with the JLF and OBSF-30. Showed it off here, and someone wanted it. MAN, WHO DID I SELL THIS STICK TO!!!???

This is what I feel got "Sanwa" into the consciousness of the hardcore joystick dude. Soon, I built some sticks for some others here in the US, ICELAND, SINGAPORE, GERMANY. I couldn't make them fast enough, nor did I have the time... I was still going to school. It literally took me 40hours plus to make one. I had to handmade the things.

Soon, I burnt out. The Sanwa rep didn't respond anymore, but I was glad. The $150 I was selling them for was not enough, and I felt charging more would be a disservice to this community.

I turned down offers to make sticks for some competitions, other requests by non-VFers, offers to design a production stick. Years later, I still get emails with questions on stick making, and requests to build more sticks.

Then I saw the Mad Catz SF sticks. I THOUGHT THEY LOOKED JUST LIKE MY STICKS. I thought to myself, "what a ripoff." Some of the Hori sticks look like my sticks. Heck, I tried to emulate theirs, but the design of mine was out of necessity as I was working with wood and I had to make them angular. I saw other joystick creations by others that was obviously inspired by me and not even know it. Even the idea of the joystick having interchangeable console plugs... argh!

I feel sort of depressed knowing that maybe, just maybe, I am responsible for Sanwa getting all this attention, for Sanwa to be the BMW of stick parts... for being a major part in starting the joystick building and modding and just getting all this hoopla into getting and using superior joystick parts.

My ego is getting the best of me, and I just had to get this out... heh, I've been meaning to write this ever since I saw a Tekken stick created with my blueprint for stick making, and he didn't even know it. I shouldn't have googled "joystick builder" to see if the site was still up. I saw the images pop up and I almost freaked.

Well, there's the story, and I feel better now it's forever archived here.

Now I'm thinking of how Herm Edwards of ESPN NFL shows and his saying..."don't press send." Obviously, I did.

 

haha i remember you catch22 from hardcoregaming, (i used to go by piccolo back then) i wonder whatever happened to ed. i miss recoil . glad you shared that story man.


meeeemoriieessss..

 

Mr. Piccolo, hey, man, what's up?

You can tell with my triple dot (...) in my sentences, who I was influenced from

Whatever has happened to ED. Recoil... wow, that were the times. I wrote in on my Saturn and was beyond thrilled (schoolgirl giddy in fact) when he posted my email.

And yeah, stumbled upon a post by MAXIMUM and man, the memories came flooding back. Sad that video games aren't what they were then.

Thanks for reading the post, and reminiscing.

Can you believe it though? Some thought I fell off the face of the earth.

 

Heh, I actually thought you did. Glad to be proven wrong, though.

I need to get in touch with Travis again. We exchanged emails a couple years ago but I haven't heard from him since.

Kruza

 

Great post. Joysticks (excuse me the term now is fightsticks ) is big business now. One can definitely say that you are a pioneer.

I was on Hardcoregaming and game-411 sites often back in the day too.

 

i remember catch22's sticks as my first introduction to sanwa parts. no other game needed or wanted them at the time except maybe the hardcore shmup community who were all about seimitsu sticks.

i remember the vshg as the first stock all sanwa ps3 stick. in japan i think they were only around 70 bux retail. even the all sanwa ps2 hori stick was only a limited edition rare stick that sold for way more than what the vshg went for.

i remember kod as the first to show it was possible to dual mod a ps3 stick with a 360 pad that is common ground. no other game needed their ps3 stick to work on 360 at the time except vf5.

i remember laakira as the first to have a replica hd jap cab made with his lindberg cab. now you see all these dudes with replica vewlix cabs.

other things about vf like having frames available on the internet for players to study is like another thing i remember the vf community did first. back then players from other games said you didn't need to know frames now its like every game you need to know them.

so yeah virtua fighter series is the father of 3d games but to me it's clear that it has influenced so much more in the fighting game community.

the end.

 

one more thing i remember related to sticks/pads that vf helped with was markman using ps3 vf5's training mode frame counter to test usb converters for lag. this is another important thing vf did to help the fighting game community play their games better.

 

that thing looks better than any of the recent console "VF" sticks released.

 

Howzit, seems like VFDC is the place former Hardcoregaming alumni has come to roost. Makes sense though, as the common thread that binded us together was VF. Man, we need a reunion party or something.

 

That pic I posted is actually the first stick that I made. It was not very well made from the standpoint of my later sticks... but someone had to buy it. He was insistent to get it.

Funny, I should have kept it. If anybody knows who has that stick, it should really be in a Video Game Museum of some sort... seriously. That stick was the stick that inspired them all.

 

wow MAXIMUM lol, i remmeber that guy. do you remember sonysucks? lmao that guy man.

i nearly forgot that kruza was one of the regular members back then. and yep, hes still the king of racing games

Speaking of parties...my memory is fuzzy about this but...didnt we had like some type of reunion at someones house back then? i remmeber going to a nice apartment and playing shenmue on a PC monitor among other games....hmmm maybe im wrong but i could swear that was a hardcore gaming party..

and daam it, now i notice i love doing Ellipsis way too much... lol

 

Yeah, now I remember! Kruza was killing it on sega rally 2. His times were incredible. But people might not know I had the top American time for sega touring car.

I'm in Hawaii, so I didn't make any reunion

I'll be updating this thread later with more pics of the sticks I built... And more stories behind them.

Does anyone still have them?

 

Found my old stick... pretty beat up. Looks like some family member used it as a coaster.








Here, you can see the serial connector I used so I could connect any console controller.


Here, you can see the octagon gate allowing for easier circular motions, differing from the square gate normally found on the regular JLF's. You can get it from Sanwa.

 

It wouldn't surprise me that you actually were a gaming joystick pioneer, and if you had the 20/20 hindsight as business foresight, you would be a successful businessman atm.

That's not meant as a trolling statement. The world is filled with ppl like that, and the sucessful ppl are often there because of luck and emulation, not innovation.

For example, if Steve Jobs didn't have his comeback after he was fired from Apple decades ago, he would have died as a nobody now. But he's 10x the geniu Bill Gates is.

 

Hey Catch! It's great to see you back!

Miss you man! And you were definitely an influence on me (heck, both you and Kruza helped me appreciate Sega Rally 2 so much on top of many other things)!

That said, also miss our chats and everything, been a long long time!

And it was a treat always seeing your "latest" stick designs. I still remember the wooden one! Nice finish and everything!

Huge and warm welcome back, man!

 

The manufacturing business is a business I was not familiar with at the time. Also, I was a student busting my brains studying.

Look, it took a little while for Hori and Mad Catz to figure it out, to figure out that there was demand, but they have all the time and resources to make AN AFFORDABLE, ARCADE QUALITY joystick.

I would have to have to designed the production stick, talk to production professionals, packaging pros,... you get the idea.

Some here must have pitched the idea to somebody, but I do know that my sticks made it to some big competition... it don't know if it was EVO, but from there, a fire turned into an inferno.

Here's an excerpt from a Thread I started back when it was getting crazy:
http://virtuafighter.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/70830/2

Here was my reply:

 

Chan, Myke, yeah, feels great to be back. I'M DEFINITELY BACK. I feel like I've lost my way, not forgetting where I come from though, always thinking about "home." An Odysseus/Ulysses of VF... haha.

Honestly, it was too much at the time. I made the Joystick Builder website to help alleviate the stress of making them, so people could make their own, and the "tech support" emails just got to the point that I had to walk away. But now I'm back! Final Showdown brought me back.

Some still remembered:
http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/catch22s-vf-stick-plans.71859/

Chan, you thinking about this one?:

 

I found the old Joystick builder files, and rummaging around, I found this... THE FIRST ALL SANWA MODDED JOYSTICK. I still dream about this one. I don't know who I sold it to, but he's a holder of a rare stick. The Namco Playstation 1 stick is a hard one to come by.

Here's the story: I was going through the used peripherals looking for Sega Saturn controllers at the Electronics Boutique at the Phoenix Metro Mall. Saturn mkII controllers, which I call them, were the renowned for their great compatibility and ease of use with Street Fighter games. You see so much knock offs of that design- like the Mad Catz SF controllers today- it's a testament to Sega.

So I was going through the bin and came across the Namco Stick made by Hori. I just bought it on a whim. They originally came with yellow buttons and ball. This was before I did the joystick building thing.

An epiphany came to me later when I saw the stick laying around.

Plays like a dream for VF4Evo. Obviously, somebody here had to have it, and me being a nice guy, gave it up

 

Catch22, first off let me say:
That Sarah stick is SICK!!

Now for the bad news -- I'd actually never heard of you before!
Although I'm fairly certain I had your site bookmarked (and deleted it once I found out it was dead).

I think a few of us custom builders really got into sticks thanks to Byrdo, HOWEVER I can definitely see why you think your designs are "copied" more (his 5-side box hasn't been used in a single production model AFAIK)

BTW have you talked to MarkMan from SRK/SDtekken? He's the guy who got the ball rolling on the Madcatz TE, and he has a stick collection in the hundreds -- I'm sure he'll give an OG builder like you time & talk about the design process/influences for the TE.

Also also, check out slagcoin's site: http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick.html
Compare it to yours


*edit*
Anyone remember the name of that first e-shop to sell Sanwa bits?
IIRC the owner just straight-up disappeared after 2 years.