I always used the console's respective controller to play any games, fighting games included. With the release of Street Fighter IV, in February 2009, the MadCatz Fightpad was released at the same time.
I began playing Guilty Gear a few months before the release of Street Fighter IV on a Playstation 2 controller. Xbox360 controllers are not ideal for fighting games due to the D-Pad being too small and not responsive enough. The lack of quality from the Xbox360 controller and being used to the Playstation 2 controller pushed me to buy a MadCatz Fightpad.
One of these babies.
The Fightpad was my savior when BlazBlue dropped in June of 2009, as it allowed me to continue playing fighting games like I had before. Although, even with the increased quality for a pad player, the Fightpad had its share of problems.
Diagonals were hard to hit consistently. One needed to practically dig his/her INTO the corners to make sure the input registered properly. With a character like Litchi who has many combos where you would have to do a DP (→↓↘ + button) motion as fast as possible, this became an issue of inputting the downward corners. My good friend, Tim, was nice enough to buy me a new Fightpad as he knew that I was struggling with hitting the corners with an older, very used, pad.
In late 2009, I decided that I needed to make the switch from pad to stick. I saved up and invested in my first arcade stick, a MadKatz Street Fighter IV TE arcade stick.
This stick took my virginity...of arcade sticks.
Late 2009 to middle of 2010 became my personal Dark Ages.
I went into training mode the day I got the stick to get a quick feel. It was a completely different experience than a pad. From your thumb doing all the work when inputting motions, you go to using your whole arm, wrist, and hand to input a motion. There are so many different ways of controlling and holding the stick.
Another one of my friends, Jason, hastened this process for me and showed me how he held the stick, which was later defined as the Daigo Umehara style. No particular way is wrong; there are many different ways to do it. It all depends on what works for you; or what you make work.
For myself, the Daigo Umehara style is the most comfortable. It allows for micro-motions from the wrist with all the power of the hand behind it, instead of using more, or any, arm power.
It may not seem like it but buttons were also a big issue. From years of gaming, I was plenty used to pushing a button, right? Push it all the way in before receiving an in-game response. It is different for arcade sticks, surprisingly.
Arcade sticks, or maybe this brand of arcade stick specifically, are extremely more sensitive than any console controller I've used. There were times where I rested my hand just a bit and got a completely unintended input because the button sunk in ever-so-slightly.
Early on when I smacked the buttons instead of pressing them fiercely (there's a difference, I swear), it would sometimes activate other buttons from the shock on the arcade stick itself. The sensitivity and response was so different than any other controller in my life. It required work to figure out how to very naturally and accurately press each button I wanted. Yes, it required work to press a button. And some people are just so good at it, too.
"Buttons" you say...?
Between these two simple, yet only, functions of the arcade stick, it was very much like starting over completely. Everything I knew about the game, about my character, about the systems, combos, inputs all went away as I learned how to play on this new controller. It would be like having amnesia if it wasn't for the main frustrating factor: I DO know what to do, but I CAN'T do it.
I was playing BlazBlue religiously, and I was playing well too. I knew exactly what to do. I had all this knowledge, but I had no way of being able to use it due to the arcade stick.
My brain would not act properly, my inputs would be incorrect, and plenty of rage ensued during these months of learning. I actually refused to go to tournaments and gatherings because of the arcade stick. I felt so ass-retarded not being able to do what I had learned. Many many many times I considered quitting. Quitting using stick and going back to the Fightpad, quitting BlazBlue, or quitting fighters in general. I felt so incompetent during these many, rage-filled, months.
If there had been just a little bit less in what BlazBlue offered in fun, I would have quit everything. No lie; no doubt. I am very fortunate for BlazBlue being such an enjoyable, well-made game.
Finally, around May 2010, I felt confident enough to play outside of my own home. Unfortunately, there were no planned BlazBlue tournaments until after BlazBlue: Continuum Shift released. Months later, at end of September 2010, I entered my first tournament using an arcade stick. That tournament become the first fighting game tournament I won, let alone placed top 3 in, and it is definitely not the last.
If you watch the video of the tournament finals, I'm extremely sloppy. Being fidgety with the stick, being nervous, and finding out in those matches that the combos I learned do NOT work on Lambda, the character I am fighting against, all made for the sloppy play in the video. Ooops. None the less, I am fortunate.
Most players don't have a show of how far they've come. For me, I was fortunate enough to have something to show for my efforts: a tournament win. Still placing and playing well now, my hard work continues to show. Now, I feel lost without my arcade stick. It's even been useful in other games like Radiant Silvergun and Half-Minute Hero. My arcade stick has become more than a tool for fighting games; it's become an extension of myself as a gamer.
You better bet I'm still reading this. Shoutouts to Dexter's Lab.
ReplyDeleteI got my stick when SF4 came out. I pretty much decided getting used to it was going to be just as much a part of getting good as anything else, which is to say...I've still never gotten good at these games. Whoops! But more seriously, since my favorite characters (Chun-li and Vega) were charge characters it was still pretty much a huge advantage over the controller immediately.
Of course, between the square gate and SF4's idiotic input reader I had a hell of a time learning to do fireballs instead of DPs for a long time, but it wasn't as much of a handicap as it could have (or maybe should have) been. And it's almost impossible to play Senko no Ronde with square gate since it's so awkward to do 270s and some other motions in that game starting from diagonal positions, oh well!
Still, non-fighters were probably a bigger factor for me for a while since I come from a shooter background originally. I'd learned to play a bunch of games on keyboard and PS2 pad, but once the Cave games started coming out on 360 I never looked back. A lot of keyboard players swear by the precision (mostly from sequences of short taps, which I understand) but there's a lot of maneuvers I find much easier and more consistent on stick since you don't need to lift up your fingers. At the same time the skills don't carry back over to fighters quite as well since you don't really do the same sorts of motions (or button timing...in most games...)