I can’t believe it’s almost been 4 and a half years since I completed my custom fight stick project. I haven’t used it any where near as much as I anticipated I would. Mainly because at the time it was built, I was working for a game development company and we would often play Street Fighter (or FIFA & PES) during lunch and after hours. But I moved on and solo fighting wasn’t nearly as fun. But towards the end of 2016, I began to get back into playing fighters again. This time though, my main platform is Playstation 4 (no longer PS3 & X360). The Dual Strike 2 board I used in this fight stick was compatible with PS3, Xbox360 and PC – which isn’t much help to me now I’ve moved on to PS4. It’s time to “upgrade” my fight stick to make it PS4 compatible.
PS3 / X360 Fight Stick
Chronicles my adventures into building a fight stick for the PS3
Almost 6 months ago, I put a 90% complete fight stick project aside to continue work on a Donkey Kong cocktail cabinet with the intention of finishing it off a few weeks later. Today, I finally put the final touches into the fight stick and can now consider the project complete 🙂
A few nights back I decided to get the project finished. First up was making sure the fight stick itself could be recognised by a PC and PS3. This failed to work. The closest I could get was a windows error saying the USB device failed to load. After some testing and investigation, it looked like the USB connector on the Dual Strike PCB was to blame. A closer look at the USB (Type B) port showed one of the internal pins had been squashed back, ensuring a bad connection. Looks like at some point the port had something lean against it, and cause the pin to come lose. I got out the soldering iron and took it off the board. It probably isn’t clear in the image below, but the top right pin (inside the port) has been lifted up and is completely loose.
A replacement part was found at Jaycar for only $3. I added it to the board, connected up the PCB to the PC and success.
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Some more progress on the fight stick.
First up was to get the top panel and support pieces together with some wood glue and screws. I also had to get the router out to make the start and select button holes shallower. The buttons I purchased for these were not very deep.
A little while ago, I was inspired by some work done by a fellow Aussie Arcade member on a series of fight sticks (Link).
After some planning and design, I thought I would try my hand at creating my own fight stick also.
First up was to decide on a button layout and size. I knew I wanted to have 8 player buttons, along with select, start and guide buttons since this is to work on a PS3 and Xbox360 console. I have gone with a top face size of 300 x 200mm. With the side panels added, this increases out slightly. With that decided on, and a button layout, I went about cutting the top panel to size, and cutting out the main player buttons and joystick hole.