I got dat stick man

After a week's wait of shipping, four hours of work, and $80 later, my modded Hori arcade stick is finished! For a fighting game enthusiast, taking the plunge into the culture of arcade sticks and away from silly d-pads is a big step. And of course the next step is to customize and personalize yourself within that realm. But enough with my fightan spiel let's take a look at it already.

Yep, the blue weeaboo arcade stick you see above is the same one I received a while back for my birthday. The central theme I chose was Black Rock Shooter as I believed the cryptic art style behind BRS would suit an arcade stick very well. While I don't think I used the best art to convey BRS's distinct style, I was still very fond of this art in particular and am very pleased with its finished result. The text and editing were all done myself with the use of Photoshop, and on that very note, if you wish for a custom art design of your own and you lack the proper methods, I indeed accept requests. Contact me however you may and I'm more than willing to create one should I have the necessary time.

Specs-wise, there wasn't much to the modification to be honest. I replaced all of the stock Happ buttons with Seimitsu clear brand PS-14-K-N's. While the stock buttons were playable, the change of buttons was all indeed necessary, clear or not. The Seimitsu buttons are extremely solid and actually feel like buttons unlike before. I tested them with 3rd Strike as well and found all my inputs to read much clearer (EX moves work every time!). And beyond that, I only changed the art of course, and the red ball top with a blue Seimitsu bubble top.

The exact method I used in modding the stick was perhaps the easiest method possible for the certain mods I performed. Since I'm acquainted with a few people who wish to mod their very own arcade sticks in the future, I'll soon write up a tutorial on how I did. Which means that if you have a different kind of stick or you wish to mod it in a different way, you are probably better off reading other tutorials scattered elsewhere on the internet.

In other news, I've been on a painful shopping "Christmas" shopping spree (got my HDTV!). Painful because I've spent more money in two weeks than I did in about half a year, and I'm going to be spending more soon. "Christmas" because I'm using that as my justification to burning that aforementioned money that I haven't worked towards recovering in almost a year now. Oh well, 'tis the season to spend anyway, and perhaps I maybe with this stick I'll win a big fighting tournament one day and it'll pay itself off, right...!

PS - I've been continuously serenading myself lately with a lovely melody from May'n's new album, Universal Bunny, currently on sale on Play-Asia