Hi everyone, nice to meet you all This is my first post at Tetrisconcept so I thought I'd say howdy and also see if anyone can offer some advice. I saw a Kotaku post come up on Facebook with a video recording the AGDQ stream, and subsequently found KevinDDR on Twitch and have been enjoying his streaming. If any more of you from that stream (or hell, anyone else too!) have Twitch channels I'd love to follow them. Anyway, I've been playing Tetris for years, but only ever at the "fun" level. You think you're quite alright at Tetris, playing on Facebook in your dinner hour, until you see someone beating invisible Tetris in the credit roll... However, like many I'm sure, I've been inspired to take it up a level. I asked on Kevin's stream a similar question to this, but it's hard to understand, especially for a newbie like me and when Twitch chat flows quickly. So here goes... Firstly, I've only ever used my keyboard (or whatever console/pad) but I'd love to get a proper fightstick. I'm still trying to understand what's a good route to go down (and of course some preference comes in to it) but am I right in saying that it's a good idea to make sure I get a stick that can be converted to a 4-way, i.e. a diamond shape? I don't pretend to know much about these, I've never owned one. I presume you can't just buy these ready made? I have also heard JLF/Sanwa/etc but I'm trying to get my head around it all even after seeing posts like 8BitMissingno's recent one - do people tend to assemble their own from parts or buy them as a whole? Which sort of leads me on to the next part of my question. I recently got a Raspberry Pi and I was wondering if anyone had used one to emulate MAME for TGM1/2+/3? I thought it would be very cool to put the Pi inside the fightstick casing so it is effectively a Tetris console that I can plug in to my TV. I've seen PiPlay is a possibility here. I have TGM 1 working on OS X currently and it's fun but I definitely want to start using a stick, so I apologise for the long first post with far too many questions in, but if anyone wants to point me towards links/posts/reading that would be most appreciated!
Just would like to add one little thing : It's possible to play with a keyboard, I've done this for a lot of time in my life and got pretty much most of the main achievements with it. The main problem is that you lose potentially a lot of finesse, but most importantly your left hand will hurt when you don't play instant gravity modes, because you input up down pretty quickly. Some people actually experiment with something else than a stick so, all in all : Pick whatever you feel more comfortable with
For the stick, you pretty much want a sanwa jlf (square gate), and those happen to be the most common in todays fightsticks. You dont have to modify it, you just have to open the fightstick and change the joystick from square to diamond. Welcome to TC
Thanks guys I think I'll try the Madcatz Fightstick Pro as suggested by simonic. Be nice to fit the Raspberry Pi in there, don't think it would be too hard to do.
I lent my stick to a friend so I can't check how well the fit is, but you should have enough room for a raspi in there.
Better choice if you have the money to splash out (or can find one cheap) might be the Fightstick Tournament Edition 2. The arcade parts are the same, but the entire top plate his hinged so you can lift the thing up and access the internals easily. Almost designed for you to be able to put some extra gubbins in there...
