I got kinda mad this weekend.

I had been looking forward to the release of Street Fighter III 3^rd Strike and decided to get it on PS3 instead of Xbox 360. While the 360 is my system of choice, it seems like everyone I know buys their multiplayer games on PS3 so I figured I’d start buying fighting games for my newer console. Since I love my Mad Catz Fightpad so much on my Xbox 360, I ordered one for the PS3. Good idea, right?

Nope.

It arrived in the mail and I downloaded Street Fighter. I knew the PS3 version of the Fightpad was wireless, but I was surprised to see a USB dongle in the package. It doesn’t connect to the PS3 via BlueTooth like the DualShock does; it uses a radio frequency.

I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be as awesome as I thought.

When I tried playing Street Fighter, my special moves weren’t coming out, I’d have to hit buttons multiple times before they’d register, and sometimes I’d take my thumb off the d-pad and my character would keep jumping over and over again.

Long story short, the controller is a piece of garbage.

I tried playing with the regular DualShock but that’s no good either. The d-pad is no good for fighting games and Street Fighter is too hard to play without a six-button layout. I bought a game I can’t play and spent $35 on a controller that doesn’t work.

Fortunately, there’s an unofficial adapter that lets you use a wired 360 controller on your PS3 that I’m going to invest in. If you guys just had Xboxes, I wouldn’t have this issue. Thanks jerks.

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 16, 2011)

You would think that with a smaller roster, a new art style and a retooled control scheme that Marvel vs Capcom 3 would be primed to disappoint series fans that have anticipated the third entry for ten years, but you’d be wrong. Every change has been for the better, and its reworkings, additions and yes, even omissions, all create a more solid experience than the evidence would lead you to believe.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is the third installment of the wildly popular 2D fighting series pitting Marvel’s roster of fantastic superheroes against Capcom’s stable of colorful and wacky characters. The first two games were largely similar, both featuring very similar rosters of characters and the same 2D art style and control scheme. MvC3 bucks tradition, employing a new 3D graphics engine (although the gameplay is still 2D), slimming down their selectable characters and simplifying the game controls to make it more accessible to newcomers.

The graphics run on a modified Street Fighter IV engine, with large, detailed characters featuring “comic shading,” giving each character an inky, hand-drawn look. While many internet dwellers swore to never purchase the game as soon as the change was revealed, the game looks wonderful in motion, especially on a high definition television. The characters themselves look fantastic, each retaining their iconic look but looking consistent with the rest of the outlandish cast.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a vs game without crazy, screen-filling super moves and dazzling light bursts as the combatants duke it out. The graphics just ooze style, and anyone who is skipping the game because it isn’t the same hand-drawn style as the other games in the series is definitely missing out on what is quite possibly the best looking fighting game ever.

Not only does the game look incredible, it’s got the audio chops to back it up. The game’s tunes are the same jazzy style as Marvel vs Capcom 2 (and yes, Take You for a Ride is still in!), with each of the game’s characters given their own theme as well. Capcom’s side is all very iconic, and the Marvel side has quite a few impressive tracks as well.

The voice acting is very well done to boot. Not content with simply employing high-caliber US voice talent like Johnny Yong Bosch, Tara Strong, Steven J. Blum, Jennifer Hale and Michelle Ruff, the developers have allowed players to individually set Capcom characters to either English or Japanese voices, with each character able to be set individually. It’s fun to see the characters who should be speaking English speaking English and the ones who should be speaking Japanese speaking Japanese, especially when the voice talent includes names like Ryōtarō Okiayu and Fumiko Orikasa.

The controls have been simplified a bit as well, ditching the two punch and two kick scheme from before and utilizing a control scheme like the one used in Tatsunoko vs Capcom consisting of Light, Medium and Hard attacks. As a result, controls feel tighter and combos more fluid.

New players have the option of selecting a “Simple” control option, which eschews normal attacks and assigns special moves and combos to the buttons instead. It’s a great way to allow scrubs to play against pros, but it doesn’t give them an unfair advantage because they’re giving up their basic tools in exchange.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 was an unbalanced mess, roster-wise, which is understandable when you consider the game had fifty-six playable characters. Playing as Magneto, Storm and Sentinel (and knowing what you were doing) pretty much guaranteed you a win due to imbalance and infinite combos. The roster in MvC3 is smaller but feels much more varied, which is a good thing. Weighing in at thirty-six characters (with two more announced as DLC), a few fan favorites have been left by the wayside (seriously? No Mega Man?) but overall it doesn’t feel like it’s lacking in the variety that made MvC2 so much fun. Series newcomers like Dante, Deadpool, Thor and Chris Redfield all add a ton of flavor to the mix, and you’ll have no problem finding a team that you like.

Just be warned: Final boss Galactus is a PAIN IN THE ASS.

Aside from standard Arcade and Versus modes, you also have the option to battle online (which is entirely lag-free in my experience) along with helpful training modes to help you practice the combos and special moves of each character.

I’ve been a Capcom fighting game fan for as long as I can remember, and I’ve put more hours into Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the Dreamcast than probably any other fighter I’ve ever played. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is not only a worthy successor in this storied franchise, it in fact sets the bar even higher, which is even more impressive when many thought the bar was at the highest point possible. It’s so good I almost couldn’t pry myself away from the game to write this review.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is available now for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

All I really need to say about Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is that it manages to cram all of the features of its console big brother into a smaller cartridge. This isn’t just a portable version of SSF4, this is SSF4.

Granted, there were a few things that needed to be scaled down in the transition to a handheld: backgrounds that were full of life and animation are now static, and character model elements that were fluid before, like Ryu and Sakura’s headbands, are now stiff and immobile.

Honestly, though, those omissions aren’t even that big a deal: the game still looks great. The character models retain their personality from the HD versions of the game (and judging by screenshots I’ve seen, they look even better than the iPhone version). The 3D, which you wouldn’t think would add much to a 2D fighter, really adds a lot of depth to the game, with the backgrounds becoming layered and the fighters really popping in the foreground. The fact that Capcom is one of the few developers that still likes to use color in their games really shines here, and the game is a great way to see what your new handheld is capable of.

The game has a new 3D view mode, which moves the camera slightly over the shoulder of your character, and it certainly looks cool and makes good use of the 3D effect, but it makes play extremely confusing. It’s something you’ll use for one match to check it out and then switch back to the regular camera mode.

All thirty-five fighters from the console versions are playable, with all alternate costumes and colors unlocked from the start (I call eternal dibs on Sakura, alternate costume, color 6). The anime openings and endings for each are still in arcade mode as well. The voicework and music all still sound amazing, especially in my Astro headphones, and there’s no noticeable drop in quality from the console version.

The game makes use of the touch screen by allowing a “Lite” control mode, which allows you to assign any normal, special, super or ultra attack to any of the face buttons as well as the touch screen. It’s a good thing that it’s there, too, because trying to play like you would on the console just doesn’t work. The circle pad isn’t conducive to many of the precise movements needed for many high level techniques, and using the d-pad becomes bothersome due to its placement below the circle pad. Trying to keep your thumb on the d-pad and your forefinger on the L shoulder button is extremely uncomfortable.

Still, there’s fun to be had as long as you don’t go in expecting it to be as awesome as the console version with a proper controller or fightstick. The AI actually seems ramped up from the console versions as well – on Easy, the computer always knew which attacks would knock me out of my moves at exactly the right moment – and combined with the imprecise controls it can get frustrating. Now, before you start accusing me of being a scrub, I’m perfectly capable of holding my own on the consoles, even at higher difficulties and while playing against experienced players online. For 3D Edition, though, I found it quite relaxing to just turn the difficulty all the way down and treat it as a way to enjoy my favorite fighting game without having to get all tangled up in hardcore play.

The coolest new feature, though, is the figure mode. As you play you earn FP – Figure Points – which you use to purchase bottle cap figurines of the game’s fighters. You can also use Play Coins, if you wish. You purchase them through a slot machine system, so while they’re somewhat random, if you’re good you can still nab the one you want. The figures are used in the game’s StreetPass functionality; you build a team of five figures (all of which have levels, ranging from one to seven depending on their power) with a maximum total level of twenty. Anyone else you walk by who’s played 3D Edition will engage in a quick battle with your figurines, earning you more Figure Points. I haven’t gotten the chance to try it out yet, as this isn’t Japan where I’m going to walk by several people with the device without even trying, but I’m really dying to give it a go.

All in all, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition is a great purchase for grizzled veterans and fledgling fighters all the same. Keeping all the features of the console version while adding in things to make the game more accessible to newcomers (and also realizing the limitations of the control mechanism) make it not only an excellent launch title, but a game that will remain a “must-own” even as the 3DS’ library continues to grow.

So I’ve been playing a whole crap ton of Marvel vs Capcom 3 lately. It’s an amazing game, and considering how much time I spent playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 on my Dreamcast it’s really no surprise how captivated I am by its sequel.

I’m getting pretty into it, too; I’ve been reading Shoryuken’s guides and I watched Level|Up’s “Wednesday Night Fights” event last week. I’m trying really hard to get better, even though I’m not having much luck.

I decided to try to sell my fightstick on eBay the other day, since I wasn’t using it, and I’d buy another fightpad so Christina and I could play together. We set up the auction and I was about to write the description, but as I looked back on the pictures from my blog post about it… I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t part with the fightstick.

I know it’s a bit harder for me to use, because I’m not used to it. I went to arcades as a kid, but not often because there weren’t that many near me and my parents didn’t like taking me anyway. I grew up playing fighting games on controllers. It’s why I liked the fightpad so much.

But the stick… I’m forcing myself to learn how to use it better. I still tend to get confused in the heat of a tough battle, but I’m forcing myself to “stick” with it (haha!) and it’s helping. I go on the Shoryuken forums and browse their thread where people post pictures of their custom sticks, and it’s amazing what some people are doing. I love fighting games, and I need a stick to call my own, just like those guys.

I have Christina coming up with a new design for it, so I’ll put new art on it (just over the old art, I’m not ruining that) and put in new buttons, a new ball top, a new bezel and a plexiglass cover. I think once I really make the stick “mine,” like I did with my old Hori stick, I’ll feel more comfortable with it. I’m weird that way.

I’ve written many times about how much I love Capcom fighting games. I’m drawn to them like a moth to a flame, or like a high school girl to a jerk who won’t pay attention to her. I had been meaning to check out Tatsunoko vs. Capcom for Wii for a while now, but I for some reason had it in my head that I didn’t want to play it without an arcade stick. Then I remembered that the d-pad on the Wii’s Classic Controller, unlike the one on the Xbox 360 controller, actually works, and my amazing wife added the game to our GameFly queue as a surprise.

We both really, really like it. Christina has given a few different fighting games a try but they’ve never really stuck with her. She doesn’t want to have to learn hitboxes and frame data (and honestly neither do I), so Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has been quite delicious to her, like a juicy orange on a warm summer day. It’s certainly technical if you want it to be, but it’s also very casual-friendly if you just want to learn a few special moves and button mash most of your way through it.

I’ve played a lot of Street Fighter IV this generation and already I like TvC more. As much as I loved growing up playing Street Fighter and Capcom’s more “serious” fighters, the Vs. series has definitely risen above the rest as far as my enthusiasm has been concerned. I love having multiple fighters to configure into various teams, I love the crazy team-up super moves, and I love combos that can reach the 50-hit mark. There’s something about the mayhem of it that just makes it so much more fun to play. I mean, come on, TvC even measures its damage in the billions. BILLIONS. There is nothing more satisfying than pulling off a team super and seeing the combo meter tell you that you inflicted 21 billion damage on your opponent.

The cast is great as well. I’m not terribly familiar with the different Tatsunoko series (except Casshan, which I liked) but I definitely want to check them out after this game. Many of them hail from the era of anime where helmets with colored visors were all the rage and it’s really fun to see them butt heads with some of Capcom’s finest. The Capcom side is also surprisingly varied, with only Ryu, Chun-Li, and Alex representing Street Fighter.

I’m really glad we checked it out because I’ve wanted a fighting game that Christina would want to play with me for a while, and we’re actually able to have very close matches most of the time. I’m trying not to learn too much of the technical aspect of the game, actually, to keep it fun.

The game is cheap enough now to where it’s an easy purchase to justify if you’ve been on the fence about it. We did the “Keep It” option from GameFly and it was about $20, which seems to be what it’s going for in stores these days. It’s a lot of fun, it has a rockin’ soundtrack and interesting cast, and it’s welcoming to both die-hards and casuals alike. Get hype!

I haven’t really played Street Fighter much lately, mostly because I just couldn’t get used to playing with an arcade stick (and playing with the Xbox 360 controller is NOT an option). It wasn’t anything wrong with the stick itself, it just wasn’t the way I had always played Street Fighter. In the heat of battle I tended to get flustered and lose my position on the stick, and as a result I’d lose and get angry.

I had some good luck the other day and managed to pull a loot card in a booster pack of World of Warcraft cards, so I put the card on eBay and decided to invest in one of the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Fightpads. They were advertised as a cheaper alternative to the arcade sticks, and I had heard nothing but great things about the d-pad they designed. I picked the one with the Chun-Li design because a) blue is my favorite color, b) I thought it’d be weird buying a controller with a buff dude on it, and c) c’mon it’s Chun-Li, the First Lady of Gaming.

You see, when I was a young lad growing up in Antelope, California, I didn’t spend my time playing Street Fighter in the arcades. We didn’t have a lot of arcades in the area so a trip there was a special treat (even moreso when you consider that my parents both hated the fact I loved video games so much). No, I spent my time playing Street Fighter with one of these bad boys:

I took to the new controller immediately. It took me maybe three or four Hadouken motions before I was comfortable with the d-pad. I did a couple trials to warm up and then jumped online. The difference was night and day! I won 8 out of my 10 matches (which is pretty good for me!) and even when things got tight, I didn’t lose my cool and bumble with the controller.

The d-pad is fantastic. I had read that they took a lot of inspiration from the Sega Saturn controller (considered by many to be THE fighting game controller, which makes sense when you remember that the Saturn was the best home console for 2D fighters in history). It’s incredibly responsive, and although the d-pad feels like it has a lot of swivel to it, it doesn’t feel floaty or slow. The buttons are great, being a bit larger than the ones used on the standard 360 controller, and they have a very satisfying click when you push them.

The top of the controller is a glossy plastic adorned with whatever character you prefer (There are Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Blanka, Chun-Li, Guile, T-Hawk, Sagat, and Juri versions available) and the bottom is more of a rubbery material. This is my only complaint with the controller: I get that they used the rubbery material to keep the pad from slipping if your hands get sweaty, but as a result it made my hands MORE sweaty. My hands typically don’t get very clammy when I play games, but they definitely felt that way after a few rounds with this new pad. It WAS particularly humid out today, and we live on the third floor, so it could have been the weather. Still, it’s worth noting.

It also has a turbo function that can be toggled for each button, as well as a switch to set the d-pad as either the d-pad, left analog, or right analog of the default controller.

The pads retail for $40 and are available for the Xbox 360 (wired) and PlayStation 3 (wireless). If you want to get into Street Fighter and hate fumbling with the default controllers but a $100 or more fightstick is a bit too much for your tastes, then this controller is a fantastic investment. If you wind up playing on the 360, let me know if you’re ever up for a match! My gamertag is Joe Sunrider.

This is the best 3 minutes of live action Street Fighter you’ll ever see.

I’m not going to make a habit of passing off cool things I find as blog posts, but this was really awesome. I mean, that IS Ken. Like, if Ken stepped out of the game into real life, he’d look just like that.

So Capcom has once again taken an amazing fighting game and updated it by adding even more awesome to it. What’s better than Street Fighter IV, if not SUPER Street Fighter IV?

As you may recall from some of my earlier posts, I am a huge Street Fighter fan. I’ve been through Capcom’s update cycles before (I’ve played/owned Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter II Championship Edition, Super Street Fighter II, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo), so when they announced late last year that they’d be updating Street Fighter IV, I didn’t interpret it as some kind of attempt to milk their customers as so many of the basement-dwelling internet populace did. I knew it meant Capcom would take what was so great about Street Fighter IV, tweak it, refine it, and add a ton of great things to it.

Street Fighter IV (which I’ll refer to as “Vanilla IV” from this point forward) was unbalanced. It wasn’t unbalanced to the point of being broken like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but there were characters who were overpowered and had a clear advantage over all others, like Sagat. With Super IV, Capcom went back and rebalanced the characters a bit, making the playing field a bit more even.

I noticed this a lot with my main character, Sakura. In Vanilla IV, Sakura was considered a “low-tier” character, mostly due to her low damage output and her low stamina. They’re buffed her up a bit in Super IV, increasing her damage output slightly, while adjusting the amount of damage she takes. She’s also got a very handy new Ultra move in the Shinku Hadoken (and the anti-air Shinku Tengyo Hadoken) which I’ve been trying to work into my game.

Every character now has two Ultra moves, with all returning characters gaining one new one since Vanilla IV. You select one at the beginning of each match, depending on your play style. This gives you an amazing amount of versatility in the way you play. Going back to Sakura, my main weapon when I play as her is her EX Shinpukyaku, which combos very well into her Shinku Tengyo Hadoken, making that a much more useful Ultra to me than her old Haru Ranman.

Ten new characters have joined the roster, boosting it up to a whopping 35 characters. Returning from Super Street Fighter II are Dee Jay and T. Hawk, from the Street Fighter Alpha series are Guy, Cody, and Adon, from Street Fighter III come Dudley, Makoto and Ibuki, and two new characters, Korean kickboxer Juri and Turkish oil wrestler Hakan are brand new additions. They all add something new to the roster and really spice up the online play (Super Ken Fighter IV this is not, at least in my experience so far). I’ve taken a liking to Cody myself, and I’m trying to get good with him but it’s slow going, sadly.

There’s also new online modes, including Endless Battle, which is an 8-player “Winner stays” scenario, just like in an actual arcade. Team Battle lets you partner up with another player and try to score wins for your team. Replay Mode lets you join a lobby and watch recorded matches, checking out other strategies and being able to analyze a character’s moves without having to do so in the heat of battle.

The only thing they took out, though, was the old theme song “The Next Door” (aka “Indestructable”). This saddens me beyond belief. I can no longer feel it comin’ over me, nor feel it all around me.

A lot of people have put up a big stink about how this is all a retail release rather than a DLC update. These people are stupid. I mean, I’m fully aware that today’s gamers are a group of entitled, self-centered idiots, but the fact that people were demanding that this update be released for free is absolutely astounding. It also shows that they know nothing about Street Fighter, again proving their limited mental capacity.

If you can look me in the eye and say WITH A STRAIGHT FACE that ten brand new characters, a rebalancing of the 25 old ones, new stages, bonus stages, and several new modes should be handed to you FOR FREE, then I’m going to Dragon Punch you in the face. Capcom isn’t even charging $60 for this one; it’s a budget title. You’re spending $40. If you REALLY liked Street Fighter, you’d understand that these are SUBSTANTIAL, game-changing updates that really are worth paying for. It’s not a patch to fix a graphical glitch. This is essentially a brand new game.

So shut up.

If you liked Street Fighter IV, you’re going to love Super IV. Vanilla IV was an amazing fighter with a ton of depth. Super IV one-ups it in every way imaginable. The cast is huge, the mechanics are more refined, and not everyone plays as Ken anymore! What more do you want?

Buy it. It’s absolutely worth every penny.

So I just got done playing some of the old Capcom NES Disney games. Rescue Rangers, DuckTales… man, those are STILL good games. The gameplay is still solid, the music is among the best ever on the NES, and they were based on awesome cartoons.

Now I really want a Hi-C and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I’m a huge fan of fighting games. I’ve been Dragon Punching, Flash Kicking and Yoga Firing for the majority of my life. I’m nowhere near as good at them as I used to be, but I’m still a sucker for them, especially for 2D fighters by Capcom specifically.

I still remember the first time I ever played Street Fighter II. It was 1992, and everyone in my second grade class was talking about how cool it was. Everyone said Chun-Li was the best character. I went home with one of my friends to finally play, and of course I picked Chun-Li because hey, everyone said she was the best. I don’t remember if I won or lost that first match, but I remember wanting more.

I don’t play as Chun-Li much these days, but when I do I remember the first time I ever picked up the game, and it feels like hanging out with an old friend.

All I wanted to do at anyone’s house, if they had a copy of Street Fighter II, was play Street Fighter II. I was hooked. I played Ryu a ton (yeah, I know I know) but I loved mixing it up as each of the World Warriors. As we were moving some stuff around in the apartment today, I picked up my Sega Genesis copy of Super Street Fighter II, and remembered how many hours I put into that game. I played by myself, mostly, but with the amount of time I put into it you’d have thought I was having tournaments with my entire class on a daily basis.

I was never too much into Street Fighter III when that came out, mostly because the home console versions were so hard to come by, but I still loved Capcom’s other fighters, especially the Vs. series. X-Men Vs. Street Fighter was SO AWESOME. How cool was it to fight Wolverine and Ken as Ryu and Cyclops? Pulling off a full screen Hadoken/Optic Blast combo was so freaking satisfying.

One of my greatest gaming triumphs was when I was 13 years old. My parents had taken me out to pizza, and the Round Table Pizza we would go to had an X-Men Vs. Street Fighter machine. After I had wolfed down my pizza and begged for money, they gave me one quarter to shut me up. So I went over and started my game.

I got through a few fights when a bunch of older kids, probably 17 or 18 years old, came up around the machine. “Hey, let’s beat this kid and get him off the machine so we can play.” I wasn’t about to let them waste the only quarter I had, so when the first kid stepped up to challenge me, I beat him. I don’t mean just barely, either; I mean absolutely whooped his ass. I didn’t say anything as he kicked the cabinet, just kept staring at the monitor, looking out of the corner of my eye at the next one to step up.

One by one they fell, over and over again. They kept getting angrier and angrier, and I was feeling pretty good. Eventually my parents wanted to leave, so the other kids finally got the machine to themselves after my dad literally pulled me away by my collar.

I bought the Sega Dreamcast primarily for Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. OH MAN I loved that game SO MUCH. I thought I was pretty good at it, too, until I started playing other people. For some reason, I was never good at combos in that game, so pretty much every time I went up against someone who knew what they were doing I got my ass served with all the trimmings. Still, I loved my team of Ryu, Mega Man and Jill, or “Team Sequels” as I called them.

Capcom vs. SNK 2 on the original Xbox was another favorite of mine. I always liked the Fatal Fury games a lot, mostly for their characters, so seeing the two rival companies going head to head in one game was something quite special, and something I didn’t experience again until Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games on Wii.

Anyway, once Street Fighter IV came out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, I knew I wanted to get back in. It had been a decade since the last “proper” Street Fighter, and I was ready to relive my glory days. Of course, I never got to relive my glory days because apparently I suck now, but I still had a lot of fun. I didn’t really like how Ryu played in Street Fighter IV, and Ken… well, everyone plays Ken. So I tried out spunky schoolgirl Sakura, since I played as her a bit in Street Fighter Alpha, and I had found my new main.

Also, for the record, The Last Ride is a fantastic song. Anyone who disagrees is a jackass.

Everyone knows that the Xbox 360 controller sucks for fighting games, because the D-Pad is so awful I’m convinced they designed it without knowing what a thumb looks like. To remedy this, I invested in one of Hori’s fighting sticks.

Now, I’m no scrub. I wasn’t about to hang out with that stick’s awful color scheme. I did some research on the Shoryuken forums, and saw that a lot of people were modding their sticks, or building completely custom sticks from scratch. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do something from scratch, because I’m kinda dumb, so I decided to fix up my Hori stick.

The main problem I had with Hori’s stick was the square gate for the joystick. What this means is that at the bottom of the joystick, there was a square frame for it to move around in. This makes the “fireball” motion (moving the stick from the down position to the right position in one motion) extremely difficult. So I ordered an octagonal gate to replace it with. While I was at it, I ordered new buttons as well. According to Shoryuken members, Sanwa was the company whose parts were in the actual Street Fighter IV machines in Japan. I ordered those, because having authentic arcade parts in my stick was something I wasn’t going to pass on.

While customizing your stick to perform better is always your main focus, you HAVE to make it look cool. I fooled around in Photoshop (with Christina’s help) and came up with a simple, fun design with Sakura, and got it printed out as a “lami-label,” basically a laminated sticker. I peeled off the boring default sticker, tossed it in the trash and slapped STYLE onto my stick.

Christina’s dad helped me with the inside work, since I didn’t have any experience soldering wires, but by the end of it I was pretty good. Inside the stick is a little sloppy since it was the first time I’ve done a project like that, but the stick controls like a dream. More importantly, though, it’s MINE. It’s not something built and designed and mass produced. I gutted it, rebuilt it, and put my own personal touches on it.

Of course, I still suck at Street Fighter, but my arcade stick is awesome. I’m always down for a match, so if you ever want to kick my ass, my Xbox Live Gamertag is Joe Sunrider.