That not what i meant actually, I ordered DVDs of a MAME set from a group of MAME burners, they haven't arrived.
Anyways, the joystick I purchased was the DragonPlus Electro Shock 2, which is made up completely of real arcade parts, all microswitches.
It's a really great stick, now. I hadn't to do some minor modifications to get it to actually work correctly.
The nice part is its all real arcade parts, which is great for the 25 bucks I spent, as opposed to the 100 for a hotrod or parts to build one. DragonPlus has done a great job with button placement, features, and comfort. The one place they've botched however is the stick itself. Which is no big deal really, it's a simple fix.
After i ruled out the fact that the joystick needed a bit of lubricant to make the arcade stick fully useable, I opened the case to find a rather ill concieved holster for the stick to make it vibrate (as shown below)
The rubber washer restricts the smooth up and down motion of the stick, which pisses me off, it makes games like 19XX and MvC very hard to play properly, my first theory was, if I get some force to push and pull the joystick back into place, it should work, right? Well, I tried some of my brothers brace gunband, the tiny little things they make you wear with braces, because I didn't have much room to work. This works, to an extent, if you dont hold the stick in, they do a fine job of pulling the stick back. However, if you hold it in for more then 2 seconds, it delays, which isn't going to work.
So, after about an hour of at least semi-satisfactory play, I went to bed, still milling the problem over in my head. I thought about it, and realized it was the vibrartion assembly that was causing the problem, not the stick, the stick was just an ordinary round head microswitch arcade stick. So I got back out of bed, and re-opened the case, again. Looking at the assembly, it isn't exactly complex, just getting in my way, removing the pin from the bottom of the stick where the vibration assembly is held on, the stick promptly fell to the floor, thankfully no pieces scattered, I removed the vibration engine, and re-assembled the stick, replacing the pin that holds the sping on with no engine, clipped the wires connecting the vibration engine, and set it aside, then flipped over the control, behold, smooth 8 way joystick action. Now, the stick works perfectly, for only 30 bucks. I highly recommend this stick if you want a good, cheap arcade stick made of authentic parts and have a small phillips head screwdriver to remove the stick vibrator, because really, who cares if the stick vibrates?
