Sounds like an interesting plan, sir! There is a cheaper and easier alternative, and that's to buy the Hori Street Fighter IV stick, which i think will still be available from Play-Asia.com. Quality design, genuine Japanese parts, and excellent decals.

I like your user name, too; Darkstalkers rocks!

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Are you a fighting games fan? Why not join Digital Dojo?

Problem with all kinds of sticks, be it Hori or MadCatz is the absolute total lack of places actually having them... I ordered sticks at 4 different places, including Amazon... and all I get is order cancels and delays of several weeks... and after several weeks, shit gets delayed even more.

So, I said to myself... why buy MadCatz (I managed to get hold of a Fight Pad, and it wasn't worth the money)? Spend twice as much, but get yourself a piece of hardware that will LAST... so, I started checking around and found 2 guys in Berlin doing this for a living (they build and restore (MAME) cabinets too, and do all kinds of Arcade game related stuff, including custom sticks).

So, I get my Sanwas (or Seimitsus not sure yet), custom artwork by me, and if I can afford it, they are going to make it compatible to my 8 Bit and 16 Bit hardware as well... worth the hundreds of Euros this is gonna cost me, I think. Also, I can't wait to give some other oldies a spin on genuine arcade hardware.

I agree on Darkstalkers, too bad the series turned somewhat crap in the later versions... the original with it's modified ST-core gameplay is still by far my favourite.

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Hiking Metal Punks Forever!

a) Ah, i see. Have you tried EBay? I've seen quite a few people selling both Hori and MadCatz sticks on there. I think that a lot of them are jacked-up, price wise, but i guess some people are open to haggling (particularly on ludicrously expensive models like the MadCatz Tournament Edition stick).

b) Sounds like you're very clued-up about the scene and what's available out there; i'd like to build my own too, but my experience of electronics is woeful. Besides, i'm not exactly at the stage where i can say 'Dude, my gaming skills are so rad that not having top-of-the-range would put me at a disadvantage!', so mass-produced sticks are suitable for me. It's not like i actually use a lot of them, anyway; i'm a collector, too. For instance, there's a still wrapped and boxed Hori Soul Calibur 2 stick on one of the shelves here somewhere, which i don't intend to break out in a hurry. I think the situation would be the same if i bought the Hori Street Fighter IV stick.

c) The Darkstalkers franchise is excellent, but it's taken some knocks in the past; the Western animated series, for instance. I personally have a soft spot for Vampire Savior; the artwork and music are gorgeous, the character designs are fresh and interesting, and the gameplay is deep, without being over-complicated.

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Are you a fighting games fan? Why not join Digital Dojo?

a) Ebay is hell. 200€ and upwards for a stick that should be 140€ is daylight robbery. Not an option for me. And there are some desperate people shelling out the money, so... it's not like people daylight robbing need to haggle.

b) Well, I read a lot about it all... and been a gamer for almost 20 years now. You get a bit of a clue after such a long time - also, you get to meet the right people along the way.

I'd actually would like to learn on a cheaper model, but there is NO FRIGGIN' PLACE IN ALL OF EUROPE having them... even basic shit like the Hori EX is completely gone...

So, that's why I got pissed and decided to let them do one for me, it's not really a matter of elitism (I played against one guy who is pretty good at tournaments in Germany, I won one round out of 30 bouts - in the olden days when I was the ST King at my village little did I know that there are a bazillion better players out there...) more like the only choice I have to play SFIV the way it should be played (and a lot of other BemUs as well) any time soon.

c) Luckily, that Darkstalkers show and the Street Fighter one never made it to Europe, as far as I know. I have seen bits of it, and it was abyssmal. Luckily, 4 parts OVA made up for it

Vampire Saviour is fun, it's just missing something... maybe it's a bit too "clean" for my taste (both in the ingame visuals as well as the artwork) and lost some of the earlier sillyness. I did enjoy Jedah though. And his background still gives me the creeps to this day.

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Hiking Metal Punks Forever!