Recommend a good arcade joystick for shmups?

[CMPXCHG8B]

So I finally sold my Eightarc Onyx.

It was a nice piece of hardware, but I couldn't stand the joystick in it. It felt completely wrong to me for some reason, and I didn't like the distance of travel that was required to go from one side to the other (ie, left to right). I had an opportunity to play a few arcade games in a Blast City cabinet a while ago and really loved the joystick on that- unfortunately I forgot what kind of stick it had, but I think it was the one that the cabinet came with (it felt nice and tight and oddly "heavy", even though you could perform manoeuvres on it really easily and quickly).

I'm looking to commission a custom arcade stick off the 'net from a well known maker, but first I need to figure out what kind of arcade stick I want in it. For the most part, I don't want anything like the Eightarc again (Sanwa JLF). I'm not sure what I do want, so in no particular order here are a bunch of questions:

1) What is the Suzo Inductive like? How far is the throw with the standard joystick shaft length from one side to the other? If any of you own one of these, would you recommend it for shmups over a more standard North American stick?

2) What other sticks have a shorter throw then the Sanwa JLF? Is there anything out there that specifically targets shmups and/or other twitchy games like TGM?

3) Has anyone tried the Ultramarc UltraStik 360? Is it comparable to the Suzo Inductive at all?

Basically, what I'm looking for is an arcade stick that feels tight and has a shorter throw from side to side. The ones I was playing with on that Blast City cabinet I mentioned above felt really nice in that the force required to move the stick from the centre kind of broke away once you were at the side, it didn't feel like it had a linear spring on it at all. The throw seemed really short which made it super easy to play Tetris (compared to my former Eightarc, which felt like a goddam workout when I was trying to play TGM2P at home), but again I'm not sure what stick that was. I think it was a Seimitsu but I'm not really sure.

Anyways, yeah, I dunno. Any and all recommendations are welcomed and appreciated. I'm looking for a recommendation on the joystick itself here, not the complete package. Basically I need to figure out what joystick I want, buy it, and ship it to the guy who's gonna make the chassis for me and wire everything up (B15 SDM).

-CMPX

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Hey buddy,

I can't really answer any of your questions from first-hand experience but I posted a thread recently where people provided a lot of detailed and useful information about the feel of different sticks, check it out http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46489

Hope this helps a bit.

[beatsgo]

1) I don't have one, but you can definitely check the reviews for it here and here. The throw distance is dependent on the balltop size, but from what I read it's short, but not shorter than a Suzo 500.
2) Suzo 500: incredible short throw distance and engage. You can check out the Seimitsu LS-55 and LS-56 as well.
3) The interesting thing about the Ultramarc UltraStik 360 is ability to program different types of restrictors without placing any physical restrictors onto it. But this means no restrictor, bigger throw distance. The engage distance is longer than the Inductive. Read up more here.

[kowal]

Hi
U360 is perfect equivalent
Suzo has still better dynamics but U360 is worth to buy, more better than FLASH1
use octagonal (available on Ultimarc - gate is smaller than other) or square restrictor and
find shaft from old japan JLW version and all be OK
is shorter (27mm) and stick have only 5,5mm throw
http://www.ebay.com/itm/lot-of-3-new-ja ... 232d830127
this is japan JLW use this body on U360 or replace switch and balltop and you have too 3x good stick
old generic JLW 4me is still best Japapan stick on microswitch 4shmups, more better than LS32/33/56

[CMPXCHG8B]

Gack.

So many choices.

At the moment I can't decide, so I think I'm going to take a crack at designing my own semi-modular joystick and possibly have the thing fabricated myself. I want the buttons mounted on a circular adjustable bit so their angle can be tweaked (for left or right hand operation), and I want the joystick sitting inside a removable partition that can be mounted to either the left or right side of the button chassis. This should let me build different joystick chassis for various sticks and/or control components, and just swap them out by undoing some thumbscrew-style bolts and pulling the entire thing off.

I think, in the end, I'll probably land up going with a Suzo 500 or Inductive (I absolutely love the looks of the Inductive with a custom metal shaft) and a LS32. I like the looks of the U360 but it appears as though the damned thing is Windows only as far as the software goes, which really sucks. I really wish those guys would have written their firmware to emulate an FTDI serial interface, so you could just dial the thing up on HyperTerm/MiniTerm from any OS and talk to a built-in configuration utility over serial .

-CMPX

[emphatic]

I like the looks of the U360 but it appears as though the damned thing is Windows only as far as the software goes, which really sucks. I really wish those guys would have written their firmware to emulate an FTDI serial interface, so you could just dial the thing up on HyperTerm/MiniTerm from any OS and talk to a built-in configuration utility over serial .

I think you're referring to the Ultimarc product and kowal's referring to the HAPP Perfect 360?



http://na.suzohapp.com/all_catalogs/joy ... 50-0346-00