At this point, the stick is all packed and on its way to NY!!! Meanwhile I've got one more pictorial from California to whet my appetite:

........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................
........................................




...

As "the waiting game" continues and I anticipate the arrival of THE STICK in New York, akuma001 has been keeping me updated with some more pics of his progress!

We start with a pic of the raw materials. Here you'll see almost everything that's going into the stick. Not pictured are the two 360 pcbs, the CPO (still shipping at the time of this pic) and some additional mounting hardware.




One of the last components to arrive in California was the custom control panel overlay from MameMarquees.com. The next few pics demonstrate the fitting and cutting that akuma001 did to get the CPO onto the case:





...

At this point, everything is DONE on my end! The case has been shipped, I bought two Dual Shocks off a fellow CAG (thanks, spmahn!), I placed a huge order with Lizard Lick, and last of all I emailed a modified version of the CPO artwork to MameMarquees.com (slightly modified version... if you didn't like it before, you're still not gonna like it now ).

All that's left for me now is to just kick back and wait! Well, I'll still be giving akuma001 feedback throughout the process; discussing what exactly goes where, and what have you. But I'm at least done with the "getting stuff" phase, and that feels great! It was quite gratifying to see a pic of some of the supplies, safely arrived at akuma001's place:









Now there are a few customers ahead of me, but akuma001 was still kind enough to do a little "test fitting" with all the main components in place:

...

Planning the button layout once again highlighted my unusual needs as a UMK3 player. I had no choice but to design the layout around the UMK3 defaults - the only real point of debate was how to handle the "extra" buttons on the X-Arcade. Here's what I came up with:





Obviously, the Guide buttons need to be out of the way, so those will be mapped to the "pinball flipper" buttons on either side of the control panel.

The position of the "back" button might seem odd, but I don't think it will present any problems. I ran tests where I played a few games and intentionally pressed "back" during matches, just to see if accidentally triggering it could interfere in the gameplay. It didn't cause trouble in any of the games I tested, and since it still performs minor extra functions in some games (often in training mode),...

Had some fun putting this together! Observe:


I'll send a 300 DPI, 28"x15" version of this to MameMarquees. The resulting control panel overlay (CPO) shall be shipped to modder akuma001.

Now, through some MS Office trickery, I'll visualize the CPO with the new sticks and buttons added:



And if I use my imagination to fit the previous image to THIS...



...then I can start to see what the final product might look like. Exciting!!!

AND THUS it was settled - Busta Uppa's Xbox 360 joystick would be... an X-Arcade mod!

Through various emails with modder akuma001, I arrived at the following list of INGREDIENTS:

BUSTA'S SWEET X-ARCADE MOD RECIPE (Serves 2)

One (1) empty X-Arcade case
The heart and soul of the project! In an interesting twist, I may actually end up using a spare X-Arcade case that an SRK user is selling cheap. If this happens, my original stick - with its old, flawed guts - would remain in storage, to be used only on those rare occasions when I wanna do something really indulgent, like play Turtles In Time on MAME with a full 4-joystick setup (I am having a themed TMNT party soon, so that scenario is actually a possibility!).

Two (2) Xbox 360 Wired Controller PCBs
Easily taken care of... the modder can readily obtain these on his end.

Two (2) iL 8-Way Eurojoysticks
The red version, to closely replicate...

At this point, I would like to introduce the X-Arcade. A few years back, I ordered the two-player version of this stick (pictured below).

The X-arcade works on a PC right out of the box. It also gets you laughed right out of the Shoryuken.com forums if you bring it up there. The more seasoned fighter vets hate the thing due to its use of sub-par, IMITATION Happ parts, and the fact that the multi-console adapters for it are unreliable at best.

Of course, ignorance was bliss for me when I first bought it. And to any CASUAL gamer friends of mine who used it, the X-arcade was the bees knees. I dismissed the wide criticism of the stick as inconsequential nerdy elitism, and did my best to enjoy it.


But I hit a wall once I got an Xbox 360. Unsurprisingly, the stick's parent company was not allowed to make a console adapter that would work on the 360. In hindsight, I realize that this was a blessing in disguise - because if there...

It's hard enough to find a good arcade stick for the Xbox 360. Factor in the complication of me being an Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 player, and the task becomes nigh-impossible!

There are, quite literally, NO arcade sticks in the retail market that are suitable for playing UMK3. Every possible contender is thwarted by one of the following issues:

1) Most sticks have a 6-button, Capcom-style layout. No "run" button!

2) You CAN'T MAP THE CONTROLS in UMK3, so even with the few sticks that DO have a curved 8-button layout (which would be usable), you would be forced to play in some retarded control configuration.

3) Finally, pretty much everything I've seen uses Japanese-style controls. Even if I found a joystick with buttons that miraculously lined up with the UMK3 defaults, I'd be stuck with a ball-top joystick in a square gate! Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of people prefer that style. But I was born and raised...