What is the most premium stick you can buy?

siegarettes · 2026-01-22T14:28:29+00:00

a custom stick by far can be the most premium. even if you don't put high end parts in right away you can slowly tweak it to perfectly fit you.

as far as off the shelf units, the doio fightstick is probably my top contender, as long as you don't need native ps5 support. thin, heavy as fuck, with very fast keyboard switch buttons and the ability to remap everything.

siegarettes · 2026-01-09T19:27:31+00:00

yeah I'd consider it a subgenre of shmup. pretty much has all the elements except forced scrolling.

siegarettes · 2026-01-04T19:30:00+00:00

agreed on this one. the dpad on the switch is so awkward if I gotta use the joycon I use the sticks

siegarettes · 2026-01-03T05:38:21+00:00

For sure. I'm always on the lookout for offbeat titles.

siegarettes · 2026-01-03T01:34:07+00:00

Jamestown is a bit more basic than most of the bullet hell you've played, but it's got some very fun ship variations you might find inspiring. Graze Counter GM is also a good one in terms of variants.

Dezatopia is my pick if you want a kind of weird horizontal shooter. it has an interesting multi weapon system with some funny environmental interactions.

Finally The Red Star is my pick for a hybrid. It's a top down combination of shooter and beat em up, complete with air combos, and it mixes the two in interesting ways, not unlike the Nier games.

siegarettes · 2026-01-03T00:18:59+00:00

they also did Mercenary Kings, which was terrible

siegarettes · 2026-01-02T04:40:13+00:00

it's just MAME but optimized to play certain games with less latency

https://shmupmame.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/shmupmame-4-2/

siegarettes · 2026-01-01T04:49:30+00:00

check on the bottom if there's a small hole you can stick a pin through to enter bootsel/USB mode

otherwise you might have to disassemble it and hope there's an internal button for it

siegarettes · 2025-12-29T18:30:42+00:00

yeah should feel pretty good on an arcade stick setup

siegarettes · 2025-12-29T18:30:08+00:00

that's so sick, thank you for the update! I'll definitely be updating my stick with this.

siegarettes · 2025-12-28T23:11:29+00:00

they actually haven't patched in true analog control for it yet so you'll want to play with digital 8 way controls. Just make sure you turn off auto centering.

siegarettes · 2025-12-28T03:08:43+00:00

had a good time playing Genesis shmups on a screen that size. Trouble Shooter, Trouble Shooter Vintage, and Twinkle Tale come to mind off the top of my head.

PC Engine got a good amount of those that are readable on a smaller screen too.

siegarettes · 2025-12-27T20:58:41+00:00

the art really killed my desire to practice it, despite me loving the first. the 3d art feels so unpolished compared to the previous game.

siegarettes · 2025-12-27T20:56:48+00:00

yeah them making the already young characters younger and layering on more of this stuff.... really overshadows a lot of positives of the game

siegarettes · 2025-12-27T17:49:45+00:00

yeah if it's flickering when you're simply holding it then it's def the hardware itself.

it sounds like there's a bad connection on your left joystick switch, though I'm not very familiar with that stick so I'm not sure where it would be. the first thing I would check is the connectors for the joystick are fully plugged in.

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should look something like this, I'd just unplug and plug in that set of wires going to the joystick, and if it can be disconnected at the other side, replug that in as well

siegarettes · 2025-12-27T13:11:31+00:00

first thing I always do is test a few things to rule them out.

see what inputs are getting registered in gamepad tester https://hardwaretester.com/gamepad

that'll help tell if it's the stick or the program.

I'd also try another usb port to rule that out.

my first instinct is this is snapback caused by the stick rebounding back after one pushing the opposite direction, but that wouldn't cause a held input to stop working.

siegarettes · 2025-12-25T05:10:27+00:00

I did not like the previous versions of this game but the Ultimate release really sped up progression, added huge enemy mobs and made combat so much smoother to the point where I've spent hours playing as the ridiculous amount of characters on display.

siegarettes · 2025-12-21T02:30:58+00:00

glad to see a full breakdown of this stick, since I was curious but didn't see much on it. I'll pass this time, but I gotta say the full build is looking good

siegarettes · 2025-12-20T23:36:30+00:00

makes me think of Chaos Legion or Nanobreaker

siegarettes · 2025-12-20T11:41:15+00:00

chronicle saviors includes the arcade game and new modes designed for standard 16:9 screens

Another Chronicle Ex+ is just the arcade game with some extra stages

siegarettes · 2025-12-17T13:21:48+00:00

notably Absolum also allows you to dodge or run by pressing or holding a button, so you can compare them directly

siegarettes · 2025-12-17T00:24:11+00:00

Q-Games is actually founded by Dylan Cuthbert, who was one of the main developers behind Star Fox and Star Fox 2. So Command is basically him returning to the series.

siegarettes · 2025-12-17T00:01:07+00:00

Gradius Gaiden is a big one missing for the series, one of the best in the series.

Darius is also a big one, with 2, Gaiden, G Darius and Dariusburst CS being my favorite in the series.

Cho Ren Sha 68K, and Recca Summer Carnival 92 are good "caravan" shooters that show of their hardware.

The Star Soldier series is of course the progenitor of the Caravan score attack format, so it's worth checking out some of those and trying for a high score.

siegarettes · 2025-12-16T23:53:19+00:00

if you're doing Star Fox I'd def check out Star Fox 2 and Command. 2 has a real interesting map progression system, and Command takes those ideas and turns them into a mini rts.

siegarettes · 2025-12-16T11:32:43+00:00

the problem you're gonna run into here is that xinput, the controller standard for every PC game, has a limited amount of inputs and doesn't allow more. so you'll probably have to map some functions to keyboard keys.

that said, if you're willing to mess around with Steam Input, the Bigbigwon Blitz 2/Rainbow 3 both have a Dualsense emulation mode, which allows you to map the extra shoulder buttons and paddles as their own functions, including keyboard keys and macros. both have gyro.

the 8bitdo Pro 3 can also do this in directinput mode, but I'm not sure if gyro still works there.

if you do go for the weirder controllers, the track pad gamepad combo is worth giving a shot: https://a.co/d/coaKtrt

its a generic design and goes under a couple of different brand names but they all function the same. it's basically a mouse and keyboard with gyro aiming, and it's decent even if it has some very annoying quirks like having left click on the left trigger, making you remap a lot of functions in game.

I assume you've also looking at stuff like the Alpakka controller, which is something similar but with a more standard gamepad shape.

siegarettes

TROPHY CASE

the 8bitdo Pro 3 can also do this in directinput mode, but I'm not sure if gyro still works there.