A couple of weeks ago, you might have remembered my post about how much fail and lose the Mad Catz Fightstick was and my general displeasure with the product that stopped working after about a weeks worth of usage. So that is when I took things into my own hands and dismantled the entire thing, nothing was spared from my wrath; everything from the JLF mounting plate on the stock stick to the knock-off Sanwa buttons and switches have been put off to the side. Though, to my surprise, Mad Catz actually did put a single Sanwa OBSF-30 into my stick which I will eventually drop into my Hori Fighting Stick EX.

Enter Project Black ★ Rock Shooter



This stick was put together with a single thought that I could put together a better set of parts for more or less what Mad Catz pays for in their tournament edition sticks. With that thought in mind, I needed something a little different than the Sanwa JLF stick that was a little too loose for my tastes. I needed something with a shorter throw and tighter control and that is where the Seimitsu LS-32-01 comes in. It feels so much more solid than the Sanwa JLF on the BlazBlue cab at SVGL which results in more accurate motions and less miss commands in execution heavy games like VF5, SFIV, and STHD. But it also makes playing shmups and other types of games that much better. I still have not beaten my hi-score on Pac-Man CE but I feel that I can do it now with this joystick. Some installation notes about this stick is that you have to rotate the mounting plate 90 degrees to match the original position of the stock stick so you won't get your directions messed up when you put it in.



The buttons were also something that I thought needed improvement so I went along and got some Seimitsu PS-15 buttons to go along with my LS-32. These buttons feel a lot more heavier, but that is something that I prefer since most of the buttons that are used in US arcades require a lot more actuation to trigger and these buttons fill that old school feeling perfectly.



As for the art, I have no idea who the original artist is for this image (if anyone knows, could someone comment on it) but I found it on Konachan.com which I then resized to fit the template found at Shoryuken.com. Afterwards, I took the clean image to Kinko's and printed out a high quality Lami-label on a CYMK laser printer. This caused some problems with the finished product as the image was not as vibrant as it could have been because I did not convert the image to CYMK as I left it in RGB format. Oh well, it's something that I know not to do next time when I mod my Hori FIghting Stick EX2. And since I'm not too good with a thin exacto knife, I got some help from Aiya on cutting out the holes.

So to sum it all up, this stick has:
Seimitsu LS-32-01 joystick
Seimitsu PS-15 Buttons
Seimitsu AM-30 Button Plugs
Custom Lami-Label artwork
Awesome Mad Catz base

All of the parts were ordered from Akihabara Shop and they took 2 weeks to process and ship my order. Not bad considering that everyone is crazy for joysticks and joystick parts at the moment. Also, their customer support is the best, Per, who runs the shop keeps everyone updated on the status of their orders and provides a picture of it before he sends it out. All I got to say is that he does a damn good job at running the place. I would recommend them over Lizard Lick anyday of the week.

So if you happen to get the $80 fightstick and decide to mod it with Sanwa or Seimitsu parts, this is a good base to use as it is all ready to just drop in the parts and the mounting bracket has spots for both the Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT or the Seimitsu LS-32-01 and everything is solderless quick disconnects. The only caveat is to only use snap in buttons because the one closest to the stick will have problems mounting if you are using screw ins.

I think I'll call this project a complete success and play some STHD and start planning my Hori Fighting Stick EX2 Mod.