First Custom Arcade Stick

Well I finally got around to modifying my arcade stick now that my plexi cover arrived yesterday. I took a Madcatz Marvel vs Capcom 2 Tournament Edition Arcade Fightstick and swapped out the art, switched the buttons around and changed the yellow balltop (not shown in the pictures) to an american arcade style bat top.

After seeing several tutorials on how to modify a joystick on YouTube from DarksydePhil ( Hori Stick Tutorial and Madcatz Standard Edition Stick Tutorial ) and what I read over at the SRK forums ( shoryuken.com ), I figured I could do one myself. So I decided to use an art template of X-23 I had made a few weeks back (that you may have seen in my last blog) to commemorate the release of Marvel vs Capcom 3. That and she's a fucking awesome character.

First thing I had to do was order a plexi-cover from Art's Hobbies (who custom makes these covers himself) since the art I use is printed on cardstock and not some fancy ass material thats resistant to anything and everything. And I also ordered a bat top for my joystick from Lizard Lick since I don't think I've used a balltop joystick since friggin PacMan.

Being that its my first time doing something like this, I ran into some small snags along the way. The cutting job I did is kinda shotty, but doesn't look TOO bad. At one point I accidently yanked too hard at one of the wires for a button and ripped it right out of connector. I thought I was royally fucked but I managed to ghetto rig it by clamping the connector back to the wire with a pair of vice grips. (Good to know I learned something growing up) And the button works just fine. And speaking of the buttons, they were a bitch to get out of the metal plate til I figured out exactly how to do it.

Other than that, no snags. :D
Cleaned the finger prints of the plexi cover, re-arranged some buttons, slapped it all back together and now I gots me a pretty nice lookin stick.