Do people confuse the terms 8-way, octagonal, 4-way, square?

[MrOldSchoolCool]

Maybe not this board... but when it comes to arcade sticks?

[gray117]

erm ... not if they know at all about all - why would they? ...

You're not are you perchance? 8 way and 4 way selection is a separate issue from what kind of gate you use - octagonal or square.

[shmuppyLove]

This is a terrible thread.

[MrOldSchoolCool]

I just noticed that in some instructional videos on Youtube, a lot of people in the comments were confusing 8-way to be interchangeable with octagonal and 4-way to be interchangeable with square.

[chempop]

4 way is no-diagonals, just U, D, L, R. I can see why 4 directions would be confused with square I guess.

As for 8 way gates, I like em

[shmuppyLove]

A lot of people tie their shoes incorrectly, what can you do.

But seriously, it's really not that complicated.

The vast majority of arcade joysticks have 4 switches, one for each cardinal direction (up/down/left/right). Diagonals are a combination of two adjacent switches, up+left or down+right. So there are a total of 8 directions possible. Is this a 4-way joystick because there are 4 switches or is it an 8-way joystick because there are 8 directions? The correct answer is 8-way, as we count the diagonals as separate directions.

The restrictor gate can be used to limit the range of motion of the joystick so that diagonals cannot be input. Thus, an 8-way joystick can be converted into a 4-way joystick by using a square restrictor that is rotated 45° (we can call it "diamond" maybe?), so that only 1 switch can be engaged at any given time (but this is not the normal orientation for a square restrictor).

There is also a 2-way restrictor that limits motion to a single axes, either left/right or up/down.

8-way joysticks can have square, octagonal or circular gates. All 3 of these will allow all 8 directional inputs, as they do not restrict the diagonals. The difference is really in the feel of these different gates, which is related to the travel distance and also how the pivot rides on the gate and moves to the different positions.

Required reading

[MrOldSchoolCool]

I've found that the 2-way joystick is unnecessary if you have a 4-way already. Especially considering the limited number of games you have access to. You'd have to really mess up by going either straight up or down to do an incorrect input.

I was just playing Joust with a 4-way and there weren't any issues.