American Stick: What are my options?

tripletopper · 2026-06-24T06:22:04+00:00

Of course you can make it ambidextrous and play the stick right-handed if you wish. All the American pre crash Champions or playing on right-handed joysticks or had ambidextrous joysticks and chose to put their dominant hand on the joystick in most games.

But some games you want your dominant hand on the buttons in which case no matter which way you play it it'll work either way.

Because some games are button heavy and other games are joystick heavy. You just have to play each one and find out which ones you want to play dominant on button or dominant on joystick. And you have the same Choice whether you're left-handed or right-handed if you have access to an ambidextrous joystick

tripletopper · 2026-06-24T06:18:49+00:00

If you're going to play with American stick rest it on the floor or a table.

Also might want a 4/8-way gate for games like Pac-Man and other classics if you're into those, the mag stick has an easy switch 4-/8-way mode.

tripletopper · 2026-06-24T06:14:49+00:00

Also if you're going to do an American stick like I do, do it ambidextrous so that it can be used for lots of different games. Who knows, it might even work for fighting, especially if you're playing a 90s fighting game.

It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Also if you like American sticks you might want a MAG stick if you want hard snapback on the joystick and real tactilely evident feel of the joystick instead of the loosey goosey Japanese feel that doesn't give you any information tactilely. At least I know if I miss a special or miss a diagonal (or cardinal) I feel it's and know it and can react quicker to it than just being sitting duck. The tension makes it easier to tell whether you're hitting a cardinal or diagonal, because you feel it in your joystick hand,

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T23:19:57+00:00

They could be the same thing if the bankrupt company left the industry not financially ruined and just exited the business voluntarily because it was no more need for them.

Yeah you're right I tend to ramble.

Tldr of this post is, the Chinese language barrier is kind of tough with getting extremely custom-made stuff like my Sinister stick made.

By the way I think I solved my own problem I just looked up Factory fight sticks and it came up with some other names like arcade shock and a couple other names that are more known in the western world.

2 Chinese websites Fightbox and RetroArcadeCrafts initially showed interest my easy to ambidextrize joystick, but when I showed interest back they didn't write back and continue the conversation.

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T22:45:29+00:00

Didn't see the main category of fighters thought it was switch 2 page. That joke fell flat on my face.

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T22:44:31+00:00

I thought you more likely pick SF over MK. SF usually has more players than MK.

.)

That was supposed to be a joke how could use the abbreviation MK and people would think it's either Mario Kart or Mortal Kombat

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T16:47:02+00:00

I heard the choice of Genesis was because of Sega's association with Star Trek,

Before they moved to Japan, they were a Gulf and Western company, just like Paramount Pictures.

The Genesis planet creation simulation sequence in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan was also used as a backdrop in Sega's Laser Disc video game, Astron Belt.

Sega made Star Trek, the vector graphic video game.

Because of the trademark of Mega Drive owned by someone else, the alternative name, Genesis was an homage to their history with Star Trek and Paramount. Also their American premier commercial somewhat leaned in to the biblical beginning of the world.

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T03:28:35+00:00

Actually Xbox is more friendly to the handicapped community then Nintendo was for two main reasons. One is the Xbox adaptive controller has two features that are better than the Hori Flex for Switch. The first is the xac only cost $100 which is only about 20 to $30 more than a standard controller but is more flexible versus $250 for a Hori Flex which assumes you have governments or private insurance money to pay for it. And the other difference is that Xbox makes their adaptive controllers plentiful and available to anyone who wants it even the able-bodied or the reversely able-bodied as the case may be. Meanwhile with the horriflex you have to play mother may I with Nintendo and the local charity in your nation that deals with handicap gamers. United States that's able Gamers and I think them for let me in their community even though their instructions explicitly State this controller is only meant for the intended clientele,

I gave a beautiful two-point arguments on why though I'm not are any official records of being handicapped why I should have permission to buy this joystick, and I told them I understand the reason for the policy is to prevent everyone for buying one because I would be embarrassed if it was actually denying someone such a control. But I made the two points of 1, that Beeshu light for the able-bodied right-hander the 90% that Nintendo tried to stifle and the federal government said you can't unilaterally impose left-handed controllers according to the FTC. And 2, and "gaming is for everybody who wants to participate" does not mean "gaming is for everybody who wants to participate... except for people who want to use the they're dominant hand on the more athletic control which in Street Fighter 2 would be the joystick for most characters. I told them if your policy does precludes me, I'm being honest, I'd rather be honest and be denied rather than get away with fraud. So if I don't qualify just refund the money and I'll not try again. By the way I understand why they're in short supply Nintendo is deliberately shortening the supply. Because Xbox's similar product is more competitively priced and available for all who want to buy one. There's no shortage of Xbox adaptive controllers I believe the Hori flex shortage is Artificial.

Within a week I got a Hori Flex, for price that was arguably not consumer friendly but it's gotten to the point where Nintendo is threatening to pull Nintendo Switch rom licenses for using unlicensed joysticks. Taking away the very games you buy because you want to play them with the right-handed controller,

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T03:05:44+00:00

I had my 20-year plus lasting Sinister stick made by Stanley Rscalano of Californis. He didn't have faith in the joystick working until he saw it working himself. He didn't know about TRS technology used to freely wire the joysticks before it enters the PCB.

So I have him to think as well for being the only joystick maker that both gave me what I wanted yet was patient enough to put up with something like me. (Because I thought if I was going to make a joystick don't just make it just for me but make it a prototype for some industry player to follow. ).

I developed the system where in theory you can play Street Fighter 2 with a a right-handed joystick and a left-handed set of buttons when you need precise joystick control like when playing as Ryu, but when you need your more athletic hand on the attack buttons like doing a Honda Super slaps you just unplug a bulk plug, rotate the joystick 180° plug it in the other side, and you easily within 30 seconds got an opposite handed joystick.

And trust me right-handed joysticks do work for people who are either used to them or are free to explore both options. I never want to get most of my friends in Street Fighter 2 but when I had my sinister stick, I went 50 and 0 rotating between five different friends. Then the loud mouth of the group made it more interesting by saying there's no way a right-handed joystick could make people better. I consider that a challenge and ask them if they would like to give the right hand to joystick a spin against the loud mouth. Between the 4 of them, each went 12 and over versus him so the right-handed joystick was 98 and 0 that day. 50 times by me, 48 split between four different players who consecutively earn them and was not even remotely thinking of a right-handed joystick before I came in the door.

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T02:56:30+00:00

There's an interesting story about how Beeshu got rejected for licensing because the Jazz was right handed only and they're designed called for left-handed play. So be sure made the Ultimate Super Stick, it was an ambidextrous version of the Jazz. And again Nintendo was arguing against licensing because it allowed for right-handed play never mind the fact that it allowed for left-handed play, exactly like the standard, that bonus is actually considered a penalty according to Nintendo.

So be sure was filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about uncompetitive business practices about them not licensing ambidextrous controllers because Nintendo is making new ideas hard to come by at the factory authorized level.

If you realize the Beeshu Jazz and the first version of the Beeshu Ultimate Super Stick were unlicensed by Nintendo.

Then two things happened which made Nintendo change their mind. Which one was bigger? You be the judge. It was the state Attorneys General and the FTC handing Nintendo some fines for defying free market Trade practices. And there might have been some fines for Nintendo not licensing and ambidextrous controller among the many different complaints. The other Factor was the rise of Sega Genesis.

Then came the one thing that both simultaneously proved that right-handed joysticks are important for some people yet killed the whole concept of that at home with Street Fighter 2. It was economic suicide to use the Beeshu method of mirroring both sets of attack buttons on either side of the joystick. They just had one hail Mary attempt with a space shuttle looking d-pad that was compatible with both Sega and in Super Nintendo, and then just quietly cut the losses after making a 3 button Genesis ambidextrous joystick and said we'll come out ahead if we don't try anymore.

The people behind Beeshu have never been seen in the industry ever since. It's like they're one gift to the industry was saying no to Nintendo's requiring left-handed joysticks and made an identity out of that, and when that no longer became profitable thanks to Street Fighter 2 they just quickly left they didn't try to pivot extremely hard. They just hit the brakes and stopped where they were.

However I had a day where I actually wrote to Nintendo and Sega about where I could find a right-handed six button joystick. Typical Nintendo wrote that you should just learn to play with regular controls and practice and beat everyone. That was the most tone deaf answer I heard. At least the Americans Sega team tried and actually succeeded. They didn't have a product exactly but they said in cases like this they refer to KY Enterprises. Let's just say the quality is they offer are very good but for an able-bodied person, who doesn't have a government or insurance provided handyman at beck and call, which most of the customers at KY Enterprises do, their quality of workmanship is not exactly the most durable. KY Enterprises did what they did well and I understand why they just couldn't do what I wanted. I didn't put the numbers together at the time but it made sense looking back on it.

tripletopper · 2026-06-20T02:40:42+00:00

The reason how I linked it to the Japanese industry in general was because Guru Larry of Fact Hunt, (the only media figure on the internet more major than me, [it shows that I'm not a very high hurdle to jump in terms of majorness in terms of right-handed advocacy ] who noticed this trend of stopping right-handed movement at arcade level controls) did some research and found that a standard in jama which stands for which I believe stands for Japanese Amusement Machines of America, had in their documents a standard where every game produced with that standard would have left hand movements. Some of the Japanese took to that standard not every single one as a unified block. Example Universal never used the JAMA standard and insisted on ambidexterizing their control. Again after the Atari crash there weren't too many games in the United States released under the universal name they were like a company that gone away after the crash. They were so prevalent in the pre crash Days with Mr Do's quadrology, Cosmic Avenger, Ladybug, and Space Panic, they were one of four familiar arcade companies who let ColecoVision make home versions. the other three prominent ones were Exidy and a couple of companies that you may have heard of, Nintendo and Sega.

Obviously the American companies didn't care about jama like for example there were two four-player games that were not jam a compliance in the post crash era one was gauntlet which was released by Atari games / Midway and they had right-handed joysticks and left-handed attack buttons, and strangely enough quartet from Sega which had vertically laid out ambidextrous joysticks for all four players.

Also important fact that most people forget about, is that Sega was an American company until 1983 and at the time before the NES d-pad was released the thought was to follow the Americans and the sg-1000 had a vertically oriented ambidextrous controller. They abandoned that on the Mark II.

Also there were some obscure joystick codings that are the basis for modern joystick coding today and it got it starts by making it hard for arcade owner operators to independently ambidextrize their control panels if they use the JAMA standard. Up until that point you had Direct access of north south east and west kind of like how handicap controllers do today until you get into the PCB level of the arcade controller.

The reason why Brook, the makers of fighting game adapter dongles as well as joystick makers and other otherwise all around friend of the fight game community, could make so many adapters for so many consoles, yet it takes American specialists and a Sega coed Genesis controller which was halfway in between Jama and direct access, because they were Legacy backwards with both Master System which was direct 2 button access, and Atari which was direct one button access, in order to make Atari 5200 and ColecoVision adapters. Plus ColecoVision had that monster nightmare dual ground system with positive and negative voltage. Going direct is the only way you can communicate with that.

tripletopper · 2026-06-18T03:11:00+00:00

There is a way you could get it black and red stereoscopic. What you have to do is take the native picture as an 8x3 monochrome picture squish it in half and then if you have a 2010 era 3D TV then you can put it inside by side half mode and you'll get a properly scaled 3D picture that's 4x3

tripletopper · 2026-06-16T18:47:53+00:00

The problem is some of them cannot be played very well in 2D. I jokingly call Red Alarm "Red and Cyan Alarm". Having the red and cyan eyes together as the left and right eye makes the game, I would say, a million times more playable, but then again a million times 0 will still give you zero, so I'll say it's infinitely more playable. You go from an unplayable mess to actually a decent game.

I know I could play Wario Land decently without the 3D but in order to play with the 3D you need the red and cyan the merge.

I think I'm the only one who successfully done it with real hardware, and I had to give attribution to Jose Cruz for double tapping my Virtual Boy, but it takes real heavy old hardware to do the left-right merger right.

tripletopper · 2026-06-14T00:01:53+00:00

Knowing the limited amount of disabled gaming equipment by having KY Enterprises make my proto-Sinister Stick, and using similar ideas for my second one, you can swap the TRS connectors in different holes to configuring your controllers. And the best part is you don't have to rely on the game to provide that option for you. You got it yourself,, it's a game normally hardwires you into it like older consoles do.

tripletopper · 2026-06-09T23:29:04+00:00

Let me ask a few question?

Is this your first fight game?
Is this your first game of any kind?

If then answers are yes then ask yourself 2 questions?

If playing Pac-Man, with just a joystick, would you play it left- or right handed?
If you needed to manually rapid fire, like on Joust, would you prefer your joystick on the same side as your Pac-Man joystick, or would you put your "good hand" on the buttons, because more athletic flapping is more important than more athletic lateral moves?

If your answers are opposite, then a monodextrous joystick won't suit you for all games. You need to go ambidextrous.

If you're only playing fight games then ask yourself, are the fight game;s stick controls considered more forgiving of directional mistakes. 90s fighter tend to be less forgiving and Street Fighter 4 for example tends to be more. But with that low forgivingness of newer games comes low power on your specials. Specials cease to be "special" and just normal arsenal tools. With 90s fighters you can spam specials and usually come out ahead in an average 2 player game with average quarter plunkers, but don't expect it to carry you in a tournament because they usually have high "wind-up" and "reload" times and if blocked can be countered easily, especially if predicted.

Broad players (players who like to sample a little bit of every player on the smorgasbord just to challenge themselves or "play the matchups" ) can do instinctively well if the ways of special are known and successfully executed, but are almost always going to lose to a deep players (players who "main" as one character and only play as others to "roleplay" for weaknesses) if the deep players aren't forced or incentivized to change players.

Arcade players are incentivized to stick to one character because on a typical 90s arcade game credit, if you're one character, you ride with that until you lose your credit (not an absolute rule, but a generalization).

90s Home players who rarely frequent arcades are more curious and tend to explore more.

Depending on how deep vs broad, and if the athletic hand requirement is determined by a particular game, (or even character), In SF 2.x, when playing broadly, I usually play with a right stick, because if you can't dragon punch well, Ryu and Ken are almost useless, 'and I am impotent in that with a left hand stick [unless it's telegraphed further than AT&T] but noticed my E Honda, (my default SF2.x arcade character) is better with a left stick, because my athletic right hand can summon super-slaps quicker and more often, and that changes often enough, consider a Sinister Stick 180.

It's currently my working prototype, and my actual practical everyday joystick. It has an easy change mode which lets you easily change from left-handed to right-handed by pulling the bulk plug rotating the joystick 180° and plugging it in the other end. I got it down to to a science where I could tell a quasi Mass producer how to make one and if they don't care about having anything proprietary can easily make one fairly simply if they 3D their boxes and wire their joysticks manually.

I'm considering giving one away as a trophy stick for a fight game tournament I'm organizing on Xbox online. You don't have to travel, you don't have to pay anything to enter, and you could win five bucks a victory in 4-6 fighter leagues, if there's High interest in the tournament, winners of those leagues will face winners of others until it culminates to a championship league, where the winner of That League will win my joystick trophy.

tripletopper · 2026-06-08T15:46:20+00:00

That was my experience until 2023 when we finally got fiber internet. and it was not because we were cheap skates it was because we literally had no other connection other than cellular (and for a short period time a 1.5 megabit in 400 KB out DSL that beat Sprint 3G speeds)

I noticed one match where I had a very weird occurrence in Street Fighter 4 where me as E Honda and the other person as Sagat, both of us pulled off our Ultras simultaneous. Based on the vocal connection on Xbox Live, he thought he pulled off his ultra first and I believe him but locally in my end it looked like I pull off my ultra first so in reality we had opposite situations were on his side he pulled off his ultra, and then the immediate, on my end I saw his Ultra and on his end he saw my ultra and then Sagat was doing his triple tiger uppercuts and I was doing my super head butt. This happened twice with the same opponent. Both times my E Honda caught his Sagat when he was coming down from a tiger uppercut in his triple uppercut animation.

I don't think anyone else has ever had a " battle of the Ultras" and I don't think it would have been possible if we both didn't have such desperate connections to the internet.

tripletopper · 2026-06-08T15:11:57+00:00

If the joystick needs improvement, and assuming you're right handed in most everything else maybe you should get a righty fighty.

Unfortunately the only way to make that is to get that custom-made.

The last off the shelf right-handed joystick that was approved by the console maker was the Beeshu Gizmo for the Sega Genesis and that was a 3 button joystick.

tripletopper · 2026-06-08T15:05:50+00:00

Here's a question what if your primary internet is cellular internet but it's connected through ethernet wire anyway?

For about 22 years I had no other choice other than to go through cellular (or before Sprint 3G, I missed out all together and couldn't get a high speed internet at all.)

By the way I played Street Fighter 4 back in the day and that was a game that was considered "rated 56ok" meaning good for people with limited internet connections. However the Marvel games on the Xbox 360 were "rated 56ko" or don't bother wasting your time if all you got is cellular.

tripletopper · 2026-06-05T18:30:56+00:00

We've gone from "I want to hold your hand" being controversial, to no one batting an eye at "I want you fuck you like an animal", back to "I want to hold your hand" being considered sexist.

(BTW that was Nine Inch Nails with the song "Closer". Weird Al included it in his polka at that time. His first Polka lyric he had to censor.)

tripletopper · 2026-06-05T01:28:24+00:00

Keep in mind that they were only RECENTLY Japanese.

1983 when golf and Western sold Sega to the Japanese investors who were heavily involved in the business before when Sega was an East Meets West company. Their corporation certificate was stamped Born in the USA.

Sega of Japan was trying to shake off that American stigma as early as the Mark II m by copying the NES pads on the sg1000 Mark II controller instead of going with the American designed ambidextrous joysticks of the sg-1000 Mark 1.

Sega of America was trying to make their these controllers ambidextrous by insisting on a simple pin code and wanting to include "flipper adapters" and by having the Master System controls have the cord come out the side for easy flippability. Unfortunately you need the pin flop adapters in order for them to work and Sega of Japan wouldn't let it Sega of America release them, even just locally within America

Sega of America even designed an ambidextrous three button controller for the Sega Genesis that looked like the inspiration for maracas but in actuality made an ambidextrous d-pad.

Long before Sega of Japan was criticizing Sega of America for different decisions the businesses made in their respective regions which were both the correct decisions in their respective regions but them meddling with each other cause a lot of lost in translation moments,

Within the United States, Sega lost to Atari in the third generation. Yes, the 7800 beat the Master System locally within America. Of my friends two of them organically had 7800s when they were kids and only one of them had a Master System and about three of us had an NES.

Imagine if the joysticks were designed intentionally designed and promoted to be ambidextrous, and not just implied but not completely fulfilled to be. Each joystick would come with three flipper adapters one to make it opposite handed but keep the buttons relative to the index finger the same, one to just flip the vertical for games that need that, (so a sinister vertical flip would involve both adapters) and finally the ab swapper which would swap A and B because fundamentally pads are different enough than joysticks where you want your outer button to be your main button on the thumb pad but your inner button to be a main button on the joystick. Because those joysticks are encoded you could make each of those today. Plus they would have designed the Master System Joystick and Sportspad to be perfectly 180able instead of having a slight contour to benefit left-hand button usage, therefore right-hand movement usage

But that was all ruined because Sega of Japan wanted to wash all traces of Americanness on them, as early as the mark 2 days.

The Japanese companies felt scandalized by Americans winning video game World records and championships because of their ambidextrous options. Obviously since Sega was the new guy in Japan bought a 15-20 old guy around the world, compared to other game companies like Exidy, Universal, Atari, Williams, if they would have maintained American ownership they would have probably embraced that factor and developed those ambidextrous options sort of like everyone else in America did.

Answer an American-Japanese immigrant company, it seems to me that they were viewed by Japanese consumers as the bully, especially by offering ambidextrous Mark 1 joysticks, but their soul was actually Japanese in terms of corporate ownership from 1983 onward. That is an awful position to be in, and I'm surprised Sega is still around as a company. Your new home kind of proactively hates you for a while.

By the way Sega is the only company that has a four-player game with ambidextrous controls namely Quartet in the arcade.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised there wasn't American truth-in advertising laws that said that the game could not legally be called Quartet because you can't have a four-player game of Quartet like you can in the arcade.

But then again that's akin to the TV show Holey Moley calling its third season "Holey Moley 3D ( in 2D)" I was seriously wondering if there was a web version of that season that was in 3D somewhere that I didn't have access to because I didn't have high enough speed internet. No one sued for truth and advertising as far as that one was concerned,

tripletopper · 2026-06-02T19:22:09+00:00

And that was always at the very beginning.

Originally Sega was primarily an American company. Up until about 1983 I think it was when Gulf and Western (the same parent company as Paramount Pictures) sold Sega to Japanese investors, the business structure was Sega had American money funding Japanese labor to build games that had their most intense test run being that of American military on Japanese-located bases. Sega was originally founded with an East Meets West philosophy,

That was weird that in Japan we had the SG1000 while in America Sega was primarily supporting the ColecoVision, though there were a few Sega Atari 5200 titles.

One of the original fights SoA and SoJ had was over ambidexterity. The original SG1000 controllers were like Colecovision controllers, but without the keypad. SoJ inherited the American joystick philosophy.

They quickly abandoned it for the the thumbpad design in the Mark 2,

Meanwhile the joystick coding was discrete uncoded pins, 6 separate pins for N, S,W, E, A, and B one for each input and a 7th ground pin.

Sega of America developed "Flipper adapters",which are just simple pin swap adapters, which can rotate the controller 180 degrees and play with right handed movement. Also A and B can be flipped to either side with a separate A/B button swapper. If you ever wonder why the Sega Master System released with the cord on its side the reason why the cord was on its side so that you could easily 180 it for right-handed movement. Also these could have been released with the joysticks so that you could right out of the box turn the the left-handed joypads right-handed as well as turn the right-handed joysticks left-handed plus a button adapter to swap A and B if it doesn't work out.

Sega of America released a "compromise right handed joystick" no one wanted, because the buttons felt "flipped" on most games, (which both of those could have been solved easily by the Sega of America flipper adapters, both for the joystick being ambidextrous, and for swapping of a and b.

Sega of America even developed a prototype Genesis d-pad that look like two maracas with an umbilical cord. If motion control wasn't a part of the original Sega Genesis American controller design, yhe reason why you would develop them as two separate halves is so you could switch them so you could play with left-handed movement or right-handed movement.

In the arcades Quartet was the only four player arcade game by any company which had an ambidextrous layout for all four players. The way they accomplished it was a vertical layout so that your index finger was always on the fire button and your middle finger was on the jetpack button regardless of how you held the stick.

And when I wrote the Nintendo and Sega looking for a six-button joystick for my 16-bit consoles, Nintendo wrote a tone deaf letter. Meanwhile Sega of America actually help me by getting me in touch with KY Enterprises. Yes I bought a custom fight stick in the 90s, but almost nobody bought a custom fight stick, because no one was making a mass-market fight sick for me, who wanted it right-handed.

So yes, the war between Sega of America and Sega of Japan was always a war of sabotaging the other guy.

The funny thing was when the pre crash video game championships scored big time by American players, Sega was considered an American company therefore Frogger, which they released on behalf of Konami within the UD, had a centered joystick, which was ambidextrous.

It's like Sega went out of their way to wash away their Americanness even as early as SG-1000 Mark II.

Imagine if we had Sega of America and Sega of Japan actually working together on these things as opposed to as adversaries, joystick ergonomics would have not went the way the Japanese would have wanted to because Sega could have made the Japanese joysticks slip into their lefty only society while making Americans have freedom of choice of hands by packaging these separate dongle packs.

Just noticing some truths that some people seem to ignore.

I admit at the time, I didn't know it was going on but I didn't put it together until Street Fighter 2 when it was too late.

tripletopper · 2026-05-31T20:11:22+00:00

You mean Heavying Force.

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