Last Saturday, I went to Fry's Electronics and I saw the Street Fighter IV standard edition fightstick on the shelf. As you know, this joystick is pretty much what I was waiting for and to see it on the shelf 4 days before the actual release date was a real treat. The thing that pushed me to pick it up was the fact that it was the very last one there.
When I got home, I fired up Super Turbo HD and played several online matches for about an hour or two. As I kept playing with the stick, I realized that the actuator on the stick was getting stuck everytime I went for a fireball motion or a shoryuken motion. I made note of how often it would get stuck, but to my mistake, I kept thinking to myself, "eh, I probably got a random bum stick, and it wouldn't effect my level of play of I just shake it back into position when it gets stuck."
So when I went and did a little research on
NeoGAF and
Shoryuken.com and found out that my problem was more widespread than I originally thought it was.
Fast forward a week later and this happens to me.
I open it up and take apart the stick to find why all input on the left has died on me. It turns out that an errant washer that moves around when you use the stick scratches up the PCB and causes the traces to just disappear. How could such a thing happen in just a weeks worth of time? Was it because of poor planning on Mad Catz's part or was this just a manufacturing error at some random Chinese production plant?
Maybe it was a little bit from column A and column B, at least from what I can see based on what they were trying to do. I guess they didn't want 2 pieces of plastic rubbing against each other, so they dropped a metal washer in between the plastic to prevent erosion of the plastic parts. What they forgot to do is glue the washer to the actuator, which results in the washer moving around and scratching the PCB.
So the point of all of this is that I wanted to warn anyone that is interested in purchasing this stick that they should wait to see if they fix this problem in the next batch that is coming out around April. If you like tinkering with joysticks and want a good base to drop some Sanwa or Seimitsu parts, I would definitely recommend this stick to you. But if you don't like opening up stuff to perform small fixes (like removing the stick and taking it apart to glue the washer onto the actuator by yourself) then I would advise you get a
Hori Fighting Stick EX2 (MSRP: $60) or a
Hori Real Arcade Pro EX (MSRP: $120). Just don't get gouged on the price for either of these sticks because Street Fighter IV has really jacked up the market for joysticks and joystick parts.
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Thanks for the tips. I know what fighting stick I'm not getting :D
I still find the fact that is only lasted us 6 days really disappoints me that they should really give us a damn warranty over such a shitty product.
Yeah, the warranty on this thing last 90 days, but when you call them, they just tell you to either send it in or fix yourself.
I mean, it's a nice stick, but only after you drop some real arcade parts in there, which I ordered from Akihabara shop earlier this week.
@Fogo- yeah I agree this stick is nice, but what's so good of a stick if it doesn't even last you to make your money's worth? If you paid for that I would be crying for you right now.
There's no warranty information on the box or inside in a pamphlet or something? Sucks if they don't warranty it for at least a year like most other electronic devices. So they didn't glue the thing together? Something that would have cost them what 1 cent per joystick? Sucks. Any chance you can return/exchange it at Fry's?
Fucking MadCatz and their worthless hardware. Did Stella tell you my fightpad started getting shitty on me? The headset won't keep a connection because the input port on the controller sucks balls. It cuts in and out every few seconds. Kinda hard to talk to your opponent with no headset.
@Corak
I don't have the receipt but I'm planning to make this joystick into a custom monster in about a week or 2 when my Seimitsu parts come in. I'll post pics when I get the whole thing put together again.
@Topher
Yeah, I heard that those FightPads aren't all they were cut out to be. I think there's a video of some guy trying to do all of Akira's moveset from VF5 but always fails at getting those diagonals to work properly.
It's nothing like a saturn pad if they are still using the funky xbox 360 d-pad as reference.
It's far from the godly Saturn pad. It's a shame, because the buttons are sized and spaced perfectly, but it's still full of MadCatz fail. It feels like a cheap plastic toy, just like everything else they make. beats the 360 controller, but not by much.
God how I wish Sega would just re-release their amazing USB Saturn pads. They apparently work great on PS3, but not so much on 360. I want a good quality Sega product to play this with.
I have the Hori Pro stick. It's so awesome. Buttons are not top-tier, but its easy enough to mod.
Fuck MadCatz.
Topher, that really sucks! I've heard that the PS3 controller's dongle-based wireless occasionally cuts out as well. But those saturn pads you mentioned sounds pretty damn sweet, any idea where I might find one?
thanks for the warning
thanks! you just saved me a bit of cash... but i need a new controller to play with now...
I only have the Hori EX2, but I loves it. I'll probably end up swapping out the stick itself for something a little more my style (I prefer the bat-top sticks over ball-tops myself), and maybe get an 8-way gate. Thanks for the heads up, I was considering the standard over ponying up the extra dough for the tournament edition.