Wrestling With Gaming has just released a “mini documentary” about a SNES fight stick. The documentary is interesting as always, but a few things stood out that felt relevant to some of the discussion’s I’ve been having over the past year with members of the fighting game community.
The first thing that really hit home for me was the reminder that there was a lack of a true home arcade experience in the 90’s. While custom fight sticks are common today and some may argue that you can even build a stick that’s better than most arcade panels, things like that just didn’t exist in the 90’s. This was partially due to a lack of internet presence (therefore a lack of places to easily purchase arcade equipment), but it’s also because companies like Capcom were marketing cheap controllers to the home market that felt more like toys than arcade controls! Check out their official arcade stick compared to the layout of a Street Fighter control panel:
The SNES fight stick shown in the documentary was a great choice for the time, but was a real reminder to me about how lucky we have it now; Simply upgrading to a stick that fit my hands better drastically improved my playing and as a result I have more fun when I play. I wish I’d discovered this stick in the 90’s, when I was grinding through MK1 & 2 via the control pad! Also, I’d have apprecaited the attention to lethality…
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