After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to purchase an arcade joystick. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV happening in a few days (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 having just been announced), I figured now would be the right time to finally give this arcade joystick thing a shot. As a long-time pad player who has always struggled with joysticks in the arcade, this is a bit of a risky investment. The market for joysticks varies wildly, as the prices can go as low as $30 and as high as $200 for products that do the exact same thing. All of the joysticks also vary wildly in features, build quality and the ability to fix/mod the joystick yourself.
As much as I would like to immediately jump to the top-of-the-line MadCatz TE stick, I’m not ready to invest $200 on a controller that I may never find as comfortable as a regular controller. With everything taken into consideration, I ended up putting down the money on this arcade joystick.
The Hori EX2 has been the stick I’ve been leaning towards the most, in the event that I smartened up and realized that $200 is a lot to spend on a controller. Hori is well-known for creating quality products and everything I’ve read about this stick in user reviews and message boards is that this is a decent entry-level joystick. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the high-end sticks, but as someone just starting out, the EX 2 is probably a good enough stick that will last a while. It’s not the easiest stick to modify or fix, but it’s doable should I choose to go that route.
The price of the EX 2 also didn’t hurt its cause. When I first started shopping around for joysticks, this one on average ran for $70. The price has come down considerably since then, as I picked mine up for $30. At roughly 1/6th of the price of a MadCatz TE stick, it’s a lot easier for me to try this out and see if I want to continue learning how to play fighting games on a joystick. If I want to move up or give up completely, $30 isn’t that big of an investment to lose.
The ultimate hope is that the joystick will help me improve as a fighting game player. I know it will take some time to adjust to the feel of the controller, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ll be back with updates on how well the stick works and if I’ve gotten better at fighting games with it in the coming weeks.
In Third Person 