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With Street Fighter 6 coming next year and a successful closed beta behind it, you might want to invest in an arcade stick in anticipation of Capcom’s upcoming fighting game.
There are many reasons to purchase an arcade stick. One lets you play many of the best fighting games in a more ‘authentic’ capacity – the most common type of arcade stick mimics the 6-button layout you’d find on arcade cabinets, and they’ll work great with up-and-coming fighters like Street Fighter 6.
Arcade sticks, with their large plastic buttons and clicky joysticks, are immensely satisfying to use. They are also highly customizable; many stick owners choose to switch between ‘ball’ or ‘bat’ tips for the joystick itself and concave or convex buttons. If you’re the aesthetic type, you can buy these in just about any color you can think of.
Much like the service Microsoft offers with its Xbox Design Lab, you can turn an arcade stick into your own unique beast. They’re also a great way to support independent creators, with custom arcade stick faceplates commonly used on sites like Etsy.
So arcade sticks look and feel great. But when it comes to playing fighting games competitively, they don’t really give you a distinct advantage over modern controllers like the DualSense.
Purely a preference
As the influence of arcades continues to decline in modern times, many fighting game makers are now developing for consoles first. Custom control schemes in fighting games take into account certain combinations of buttons, allowing for example shortcuts to special moves or defensive utilities. This isn’t exclusive to controllers, of course, but allows them to be much more viable in the competitive space.
This means pad players have the ability to access more of their character’s toolkit while using fewer buttons. Certain commands that usually require more complex button input, such as Guilty Gear Strive’s Roman Cancels or Tekken 7’s Rage Arts, can instead be accessed with a single button press.
It’s mostly a matter of comfort and preference: you might feel more at home with an arcade stick over a controller if you regularly play fighting games. A stick player is not at a disadvantage when facing a pad player, and vice versa. And it’s not uncommon to see controller players win at major tournaments.
However, there is a kind of controller that can beat both arcade stick and pad players.
box smart
One type of controller that has grown in popularity in recent years is the Hit Box, which trades in the joystick for a set of buttons, similar to arrow keys on a keyboard. There are several advantages here, mainly that a button press will immediately move your character, while with a joystick there is some travel time between the neutral position and the desired direction.
The Hit Box almost completely eliminates that delay, meaning you can technically move and react faster than an opponent on a pad or stick. That’s why some tournaments don’t allow Hit Boxes, although they’re generally considered a viable controller option within the fighting game community.
If you want pinpoint precision in your moves, look into a Hit Box. They play an important role in 3D fighters like Tekken 7, where fast and constant movement is the key to victory.
Stick with it
You won’t know if you prefer an arcade stick (or a Hit Box) unless you try one yourself. And you don’t have to break the bank to find good options.
Brands like 8BitDo, Hori, and Mayflash all sell great entry-level sticks to help you find your feet. And if you don’t like fighting games, know that they’re also a fantastic control option for classic arcade games, lots of them bundled together in collections like Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection.
Plus, there’s no better time than now to see if arcade sticks are for you. Street Fighter 6 is just around the corner and Tekken 8 looks set to follow shortly after. So there are a lot of high-quality fighting games on the horizon, perfect for testing the waters with a new peripheral.