Hi! New here, hope I make sense. I speedrun a sega game called Mercs, it's a run and gun and I'm finding d-pads are horribly imprecise because of misdirected movement. I'm considering investing in an seimitsu arcade stick, and octagonal gate, and was wondering if anyone has experience of using such a thing for such games, and whether this might help since I cannot seem to find any better custom solution.
Sure, sounds reasonable. Mercs is originally an arcade game as it is. I think the standard square gate is fine (diagonals are well-defined, cf. American-style circle gates where they are not), but octagonal is fine too if that's your preference. If you want to try another standard gamepad before setting up your arcade stick, I find the 6 button controller's d-pad (more tactile, good diagonals, feels like a predecessor to the Sega Saturn d-pad) immensely more usable than the 3 button controller's d-pad (stiff, feels like jamming your hand into a hard circle of plastic, bad diagonals).
Thanks for the response! Could you please elaborate on what you mean by tactile; and good and bad diagonals re: 3/6 button controllers? The 3 buttoner's d-pad is worn to the point of face rotation, what really tears it is the lack of definition between cardinal and diagonal and the small size of the pad, so play turns into ice skating with the fingers. Having no skill or ability to make, and suspecting getting help would be costly, I wonder whether a standard MadCatz with square gate would be better enough.
A Seimitsu stick with a square gate (you can use the octagonal one, but be aware that most arcades back in the day did not use these generally) would be perfect. A Sanwa JLF with either a square or octagonal restrictor should be fine too.
Regarding the rubber switches feeling "tactile," I just mean that the difference between one direction and another can be perceived through touch. I think the rubber switches on the 6 button controllers have a bit more firmness/elasticity that gives them more of a snappy feeling when they are pressed/released; this makes it easier to tell when you're moving from depressing one direction, moving into the diagonal, releasing the previous direction, etc.. I also like the shape of the d-pad on the 6 button controller better, it is molded in a way that gives better definition to cardinals vs. diagonals -- see https://segaretro.org/Six_Button_Control_Pad_(Mega_Drive) for some example photos. All the recent MadCatz sticks had either a Sanwa JLF (for "Tournament Edition" sticks) or an analogous clone part (for the cheaper "Standard Edition" sticks) with square gate. I think something like that should work great, and an octagonal gate is like $5 more if you need to order one. Out of curiosity though, how were you planning to connect it? Are you playing on PC emulator right now (making any USB controller suitable, so long as you watch out for USB chipset compatibility issues with the old PS3 MadCatz controllers), or were you planning to hook it up to an actual Sega Genesis? I might be able to think of a handful of ways to accomplish the latter, just wondering what your requirements were.
Ah right, I play on pc emulators yeah so I'd just use a usb adaptor if needed. I've been looking at the MegaDrive Arcade Stick https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qJwAAOSwI4ZbW37d/s-l1600.jpg as a possible cheap intermediary to get a feel for how I play with stick before shelling out, even if that just has rubber contacts not micros. I'm fully prepared to pay for quality but I imagine it will take me some time to get used to a vertically planted stick so that I can react within a few frames windows. It's lovely of you both to guide me as you have
I'd go for a used MadCatz Tournament Edition, which you can get quite cheap. And you can also replace all important parts really easily, if they should break.
except for fighting game,s where its' a preference, i recommend octagon gates for 8 way games, to let you find all 8 directions easily. mercs can definitely use an octagon gate, becaues you want ot be able to find any direction easily..