Smells like arcade spirit

Online competitive gaming is all well and good, but there's something about standing beside your opponent, with a crowd of onlookers cheering along, that Call of Duty and its ilk simply cannot capture.  Arcades used to provide that kind of experience and it's something I miss - even if I frequently embarrassed myself at the time.  Since the recent Evo tournament, a bunch of us from work have been getting together at lunch to play Super Street Fighter IV (a perk of working in the games industry).  We're all Street Fighter nuts, each with our favourite characters, whom we've practiced ad nausea for years, if not decades.  So, with Hori EX2s (some modified with Sanwa parts) and Mad Catz Fighting Sticks at the ready, we battle it out - but not for glory, we're trying to learn from one another.  Street Fighter IV's focus system is deep and involved mechanic, which might even rival Virtua Fighter's complex fighting system.  I must confess that despite playing SFIV for two years, I hadn't really understood the focus system.  I had used it from time to time as a counter, but it seemed rather slow and cumbersome compared to Street Fighter III's parry system. Thanks to a Spanish DeeJay master, I am starting to appreciate how focus can be cancelled, in order to block an attack and immediately follow it up with something more devastating than the focus attack.  There's also the rather trickier tactic of using focus to cancel specials, in order to avoid committing yourself to a move that either will not hit or lead you into danger.  It takes a lot of practice, not only to learn but to unlearn old habits from 20 years of play.

Oni, one of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition's new characters

All of which has got me thinking, should I mod my Hori EX2?  The fighter hardcore will probably be astonished that, as someone who claims Street Fighter is his favourite game of all time, I haven't built my own joystick using Sanwa parts, but to be honest, I get on well with my Hori.  I use it for all my arcade ports and emulation, not just Street Fighter and other than thinking the shaft is a little short, it handles great. 

Hori EX2 - not the best arcade stick you can buy, but pretty damn good.

However, I am thinking an 8-way gate would be good for performing quarter circles movements, rather than the EX2's original square gae.  Sanwa make one called the GT-Y (pictured below), which can, with a little effort, be fitted to EX2s and cost less than a tenner.

A Sanwa GT-Y 8-way restrictor gate

But then Virtua Fighter and Tekken players will say square gates are better for 3D fighters, as well as games like Pac-Man and Tetris.  So what to do?  For now, I'm going to sleep on it.

MTW