Japanese Stick with SQUARE SOCKET?

Okay I've only ever played VF or any fighting game using circular NA socket sticks. I just picked up a VFHG Stick for PS3 and for the love of god I cannot even do a double palm not to mention DLC, knees and advanced combos.
How did you people get use to the Japanese square base? Is there some trick to it that I don't know? Cause I can't even distinguish forward from diagonal forward and vice versa. Every time I think I'm pressing diagonal I'm pressing forward and when I need forward diagonal comes out. It's really messing up my play, I suck royaly with this stick. For those who have had to make the transition please any advice?

 

Honestly man it may not look like it but take it slow and practice a lot and you surpass your previous skillz, jap stickss are made for precision. Especially vs humans, even button mashers because it will condistion you to react using the stick in a natural way. I WAS a hardcore DPad player for VF and I made the switch it was very hard going to the VSHG from DS2 ps2 pad but its worth it and I am starting to play in a different more polished/precise style.

I have ot say Akira is my second main next to lei fei and the transistion is very hard using Akira, VERY HARD but now that i am getting results I feel I am rewarding my self the gift of playing akira the way the developer intended him to be used and thats on a SANWA Joystick or for me the VSHG.

 

My most specific piece of advice for you is to rotate your controller a bit clockwise. It's worked well for a lot of people I've played with. I'll explain why in the Angle of Control section of this post.

Japanese sticks take time to get used to if you grew up playing in places like the US (fortunately Canada has arcades with Japanese style sticks) or Korea.

That said, imo, it's so worth it and I prefer Japanese style sticks by a longshot. But that's not helping you, so here are some of my tips:

ANGLE OF CONTROL
A lot of people using a console arcade stick for the first time might be thrown off on the angle at which they are playing with the stick. They are not standing up against an arcade machine, so the arm is at a different angle. There are two main things that factor into this, imo:

1) The main one is what angle position you have the arcade stick at. Especially if you are playing with the stick in your lap, or even sitting down on a table, the angle will matter because your arms will be in varying positions. Easiest adjustment you can make is to rotate the whole arcade stick (the entire VSHG). With most people, I find they have an easier time if they rotate the controller maybe 10 degrees clockwise. I've seen this fix many problems.

2) The Japanese ball-top stick takes getting used to if you haven't used one for precision before. You'll have to eventually settle on some grip that is most comfortable for you. For me, the stick is between my pinky and my ring finger and my grip on the ball is very very loose, almost not holding it at times. My middle finger does a lot of the manual control over which direction the stick is going towards. But this doesn't work for everyone. Some people go completely underhand wine-glass on the stick. Some people grip the ball completely, though I could never get used to doing that. Point is, experiment with a grip until you find something very natural for you. It will take time, but I think you'll find it easily within a week.

THE SQUARE AREA OF MOVEMENT
US players are not used to a square area of movement. They're usually used to either a circle or an oval (though often times it's really an octagon). In fact, a lot of people develop US-stick unique techniques like doing fireball motions by pushing the stick completely against the edges and rolling or doing Raiden's teleport in MK2 (down, up) by flicking the controller down and letting go (so it'll bounce into the up position).

With a Japanese arcade stick, you can't really do this. But you'll learn to go for more precise movements, and a looser and more relaxed way of controlling with a stick.

Look at it this way too, in 3d fighters, a square area of movement is a huge benefit because you shouldn't have trouble finding diagonals, the corners are your diagonals. I have had situations where an arcade machine used american sticks with paper-thin diagonals. Heck, on the pad you often have issues with the PSP d-pad and having trouble registering diagonals.

If anything, after enough time with a Japanese arcade stick, you should never have issues finding diagonals. And in 3d fighters, those diagonals are put to very direct use. Especially in Virtua Fighter (but even in Tekken, so many launchers, techniques, low parrying, etc... rely on diagonals).

MY TIPS regarding the square area of movement:
1) Try to develop a very relaxed technique with the arcade stick. Though feel free to go all out in struggle situations. But generally, try to relax your grip. You might find more precision from this too, believe it or not.

2) It takes time, you're learning a new controller. But one that has been proven to work so well with a game. And with the bigger role consoles play in the fighting game scenes in North America as well as more and more Japanese style machines in some of the most major-major cities (well, major cities where there are tons of Asians), you are starting to see more and more players convert to Japanese style arcade controls in fighting games. That said, I am a fan of Happ when it comes to American arcade parts.

 

I made the transition from pad to vshg, so its not really the same. But what I do recall is my first month of playing VF on a pad. I was having the same problem with diagonals as I was when I picked up the stick a few months back. I believe it cost me less time to get used to on stick than on pad.

Chanchai said it before, but I'd say relaxed motion is essential, but that only comes when you know the motion you need to do and then forget about it, don't think about it, just do it.

I've also noticed in my transition that I have to press the buttons later than I was used to on a pad, because the stick registers them earlier, this also helps with diagonals because you, like I are probably going /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif->/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif or /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif->/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif, so if you press the corresponding button a tad later it'll register on the diagonal. Go into dojo, turn on the input display, crouch dash around a bit and take a look at what's going on

I've found that VF5 is very lenient with its inputs. You can go /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif and get out a /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif with no problem (now you don't want to start doing motions like that on purpose, but if you check the command input you'll probably see stuff like this going on). My Basara input is not clean either, but it executes just fine. (Basara = /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif+/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif+/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/g.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif+/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif(or/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif)/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif)

In all, you know you can play this game, you hit those diagonals half the time right? So just keep on going, the motion'll wear in. Cheap advise mayhaps, but it worked for me. It took me a bit over a month though, but I was learning to play on stick for the first time ever (at the age of 24 btw).

 

I remember when I first started using Jap sticks. I didn't like it at first either. Play for a couple of weeks up to a month and I'm sure you will improve. For VF I feel it is essential to have a square gate to do CD and crouch buffering.

I'm sorta in the same boat as I'm trying to learn to play 2D games on a PS2 Sanwa stick I recently obtained. I've played SF for years on Happ Comp and P360's which have round gates and I'm having problems doing certain commands.(tiger knee, 360, /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/ub.gif )

 

You guys still mean having diagonals at the apex of the square right? Because Sanwa sticks can be rotated so that it's kind of a diamond, and the diagonals are half way between the corners?

 

I had some experience with the NA style arcade stick long time ago, but I never found it work very well for me. I would miss diagonals from time to time and the neutral area is considerably larger than JP style stick causing moves like SDE harder to buffer w/o delay.
All I can say is to keep practicing and make sure you hold the stick correctly as Chanchai mentioned. Since I know you don't have huge hands, chances are you would hold the stick between your middle and ring finger with your palm facing to the right (like most asians). I also found keeping a good distance between you and the stick help the control quite a bit. I usually keep the distance so that my arms are almost fully extended but elbows are slightly bended. Hopefully these help you a bit.

 

wow i dont do any of things thst chanchai said. My thumb alone controls the movement of the stick

 

Umehara Daigo and many Japanese players play with the "wine cup" style. I just cup the ball from the left and grip with my thumb.

You suppose if you want to play american you can modifiy your VHGS.

http://www.happcontrols.com

 

oh forgot to mention I hold the ball of the stick with my thumb, index and middle fingers with a loose grip.

 

try learning to play without always hitting the walls of the gate. for your moves to register, all you need to do is move the stick past the point of the the microswitch click.

by doing this you will learn to make smaller movements and not have to rely on the feel of the gate to get out your inputs.

 

if you have a sanwa stick you can buy a circular gate to replace the square gate. don't know if you already knew that.

 

what are the advantages of square gate vs octogonal gate vs circular gate? can anyone name them? and is it harder to do a 270 motion on a square gate? i just had a VSHG ordered and i've been a pad player for vf all my life, in tekken i did use sticks, but they were american circular gate sticks... can anyone enlighten me please?

 

To me there is no difference. I play EVO on both an Happ and a Sanwa.

The difference is most pronounced on 2D imo but basically the popular opinion is:

Sanwa is easier to register diagonals like /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/uf.gif and /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif because of the restriction of the square gate, it makes doing double /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif really easy and consistent. Also you can probably dash faster and more consistently in 3D on Sanwa due to movement revolving around double directions and diagonals.

It is easier to do quarter circular motion on the Happ, though NOT half and full (it is actually easier to do it on Sanwa because the throw of the stick is very short). A lot of American 2D fighting gamers prefer Happ over Sanwa.

 

so basically the trick is to not do the motion relying on the gate to help you with the motion, but rather to just do the fluid motion hitting the microswitches only? what about crouch buffered moves like akira's doublepalm, what about his shoulder? is that easier?

 

ummm I don't know why 001 posted this but it's just fine to use the square gate as a rule sort of. There's no difference.

 

wouldn't the motion stop at the corner tho? like slow you down as you try that full circle? i'm asking bc i also want to use the stick to play 3s and tekken and st uff, also to do goh's throws (bear with me, i still have 3 or 4 long weeks to wait before i go back north to pick the stick up)

 

it's the fact that you have the lolly pop so it requires less wrist movement than say the baseball bat therefore it comes out more quickly

 

Imo the only difference is how the player likes to use the stick. With octogonal gate imo its easier to rotate the stick.
In a square gate, imo the joystick easily 'jumps over' the corner, making you miss the bf or df input if you try to do it quick. Then again, I never had much trouble with normal HCFs or HCBs in VF4, playing with stick that had square gates (normal Horis) only the 270s were somewhat difficult. I guess this is all purely a personal thing and you can get used to anything if you practise it. I had trouble with 270s because my main didnt have any (Akira)

I prefer square gate because I play Akira, and hitting the corners for Akiras moves and stepping is easier. He also didnt use to have any moves you needed to rotate the stick (other than stagger recovery) Only in VF5 has he had some need for quarter circle moves, now I need to get used to those.

I have never been a pad player personally, but I have seen several people I know go from pad to joystick (or at least try to). It will be hard, but if you persist Im sure it will improve your play. Its like a professional golf player changing his swing.. For a year (in the case of golf players lol) you will play crap, but after the transition is over you will play better because you have concentrated in your input technique. Going from pad to stick is harder than arcade players like me imagine.. Lots of times I saw people pull out the pad when they were in tight spot even when they were trying to learn the stick.

 

You don't need to hit the diagonals to do half circles or 270 degree motions in VF. I can't confirm if this is true for /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif motions, but I'm poitive /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif will work for any half circle forward and /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/u.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif will work for a 270 forward throw. Just get in your mind that you only need to hit the 3 or 4 cardinal directions, and you can whip the square based joystick around extremely fast. It's traveling a much shorter distance than what you would normally do with a bat style stick.

That being said, I prefer the american style stick... I find it much easier to move around /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif//forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif with them, although it's much, much easier to crouch dash with a square base joystick. I guess if my primary was a character that relied more on from crouching attacks, it might change my opinion.