GameRoom Magazine - RetroBlast Mini-Review: Custom TankStick

RetroBlast Mini-Review: Custom TankStick

Written by Bryan "VonBlade" Waters.

Sunday, 10 February 2008 23:39

Retroblast! Contributor Bryan "VonBlade" Waters has sent us a mini-review of his recently purchased customized tankstick:

Arcade controls for the home is always a minefield for those of us attempting to dip our toes in the water for the first time. The internet is awash with sites dedicated to building your own or modifying old cabinets and a multitude of opinions about how to do it and what is "best".

Custom Tankstick

For every person who loves the feel of a leaf-switch you have some who like microswitches. For each defender of the American Happ products you have people who swear by the Jap sticks from Sanwa or Seimitsu.
But if there is one thing that the general internet populace agrees upon it's that if you haven't built it yourself, it's all but worthless. I'm here to correct that elitist viewpoint and hopefully supply some details that the plethora of Tankstick reviews have overlooked.

For those of us who don't own their own woodworking shop, or who's wives aren't inclined to fancy an arcade cabinet in the lounge there has always been three main contenders for pre-built desktop controls. Hanahos Hotrod, XGamings X-Arcade and Slikstiks Quads and Fighters. The problem for those of us who live in Europe, or specifically the United Kingdom, is that the Hotrod and Slikstick are impossible to buy without importing and the import duty, customs and VAT (at 17.5%) makes it a prohibitively expensive endeavour. Additionally Stikstik seem to have gone the same way as Oscar Controls. However, in the UK we are saved by having an official distributor of the X-Arcade line of controls by the name of Gremlin Solutions and it was from them that I purchased my Tankstick and finally made the leap from keyboard MAME into how it was meant to be.

If there was one thing I gleaned from the old Retroblast review of X-Arcades twinstick it's that whilst the parts are very good they aren't quite arcade perfect. For an extra £20 Gremlin could professionally fit any stick and button combination I fancied and it was an offer that was just too good to pass up, especially as the point of purchasing a prebuilt system is that I'm not confident enough to do it myself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's remind ourselves of the Tankstick.

Tankstick Basics

It is as the name suggests a behemoth. 29 inches wide at the front, 26 at the back, 13 inches deep and a decent slope from 5 inches high at the rear to just over 3 at the front. This slope really helps the comfort level when playing either at your desk or from the sofa. Using it on the sofa isn't as far-fetched as it might sound because XGaming provide a very generous 7 feet of USB/PS2 cable for the trackball and about 10 feet for the joysticks. So regardless of where your PC is situated you definitely wont be limited in where you position the Tankstick. Choosing USB as the connection method, although you can use it via the PS2 ports, is a boon. It's instantly picked up by Windows, no drivers are needed because it's basically a keyboard and mouse and yet it doesn't interfere with your existing keyboard and mouse and no adjustments are needed. It's the purest definition of plug and play.

Because XGaming provide multiple adaptors to allow use with a variety of consoles they also use their own keyboard encoder instead of the de rigueur Ultimarc I-PAC. However this doesn't mean that it's in any way inadequate. I've tested with the X-Arcade default CTRL/ALT/Space MAME layout and with my own customised layout for games that don't support those key assignments (ASDZXC if you're interested). No matter how hard myself and my long-suffering wife tried we couldn't get it to either ghost, or stop accepting inputs. We could both perform the insta-kill combo setup in Guilty Gear X2 (both holding down all four attack buttons) or Zangiefs double-lariat without a hitch and even testing using XGamings test utility we ran out of fingers to hold buttons down without the Tankstick so much as blinking.

Customising the button layout is as simple as plugging a PS2 keyboard into the Tankstick, switching to one of the three programmable modes and pressing the program button on the back. You then hold down the button or direction you want to map on the Tankstick, hold down the button you want to map to that on the keyboard, the LED blinks and you carry on until everything you want mapping is mapped. Press the program button on the back again and it's done. It couldn't be simpler and anything is mappable. If you can find it on your keyboard you can map it to the Tankstick.

Trackball

The big difference between the normal two-player X-Arcade and the Tankstick is the 3 inch trackball right in the middle. As Golden Tee Golf is a very American phenomenon and the volume of trackball arcade games is quite small my experience with trackballs is very limited. What I can say about the X-Arcade one is that it moves smoothly, although perhaps not as freely as I'd expected. That isn't to say there are any problems, just that I'd expected it to keep rolling a little longer. The large caveat has to be though that my experience is tiny and this might just be how they are.

What the trackball does do well though is give a lot of extra elbow room between the two players. Naturally I wouldn't object to being close to my wife, but there is so much real estate available that I wouldn't feel uncomfortably close to a complete stranger. It's a vast improvement upon the "three-legged race" feeling the normal two-player variant gives.

My Custom Parts

As I mentioned in my introduction I had my Tankstick customised for a tiny extra fee. In fact it would have been more expensive for me to purchase the parts seperately and install them myself than for Andy at Gremlin to do it for me. As I grew up with microswitched joysticks on my various home computers, the thought of everything clicking didn't worry me at all.

The Tankstick being 3/4s of an inch thick meant that Happ buttons were pretty much my only choice, as Sanwa buttons are designed for metal panels and therefore unsuitable. The decision was then solely whether to have concave standard Happ buttons or the convex Happ Competition ones. The tiny amount of pressure needed to activate the Competitions without any obvious drawbacks absolutely sold me on them and in the Capcom red, white and blue scheme they certainly look the part.

In use they are, if anything, more impressive than I expected them to be. The microswitches are barely audible without a game running and you certainly can't hear them once your are playing. They are so sensitive it seems that you could just breathe heavy to activate them and so they have all the benefits of the speedy leaf Sanwas, with the longevity of Cherry microswitches. They are much shallower and need noticibly less force than the default X-Arcade ones. Heartily recommended.

Sticks are probably more vital to get right than the buttons. A poor stick can take any enjoyment away from the act of playing and they should be so easy to use that you aren't really aware of them. Again I could have Happ sticks, Super, Competition or Ultimate, or Sanwa JLWs. Because the UK hasn't got a major manufacturer of arcade parts I'd tried both the American and Japanse style sticks in equal measure at various arcades without ever getting so used to one style that the other felt odd as I'm sure happens with US or Japanese-based arcade goers. I knew fighting games were my priority but as this was such a major financial purchase for me and something I'm unlikely to repeat or adjust I also wanted to have a simple way of switching to 4-ways.

As Sanwa sticks are good enough for Sega then they most certainly are good enough for me, and the brilliant way they can switch from 8-way to 4-way sold me on them. In use they are as equally impressive as the buttons with a light touch, short throw and, importantly, easy diagonals. The microswitches give good feedback through the stick of them being engaged which is vital as they certainly are quiet in action.

If I have to criticise something I find the exceptional squareness of the gate to be a little off-putting. This is easily fixed with an octagonal or even circular gate, but that would remove the ability to switch to a 4-way. Perhaps it's something I need to get used to, or perhaps the ability to switch to 4s will be something I don't really need and will facilitate a switch to an octagonal gate. Regardless, if you do fancy Sanwa sticks then just be aware that whilst under normal use you wont notice the gate at all, in fighting games on circular or qcf motions you certainly notice those corners.

Conclusion

Stunning. With genuine arcade parts you'd expect nothing less, but when they are added to the staggering build quality of the XGaming unit, flawless t-moulding, bulletproof programmable encoder and professional modifications it truly is perfection. There might be a small price premium for not having to spend three days in the shed building it myself, but that's countered by the lifetime warranty and knowledge that it works flawlessly out of the box and looks like the genuine article. Certainly once you add up the price of buying parts and materials seperately it suddenly isn't as expensive as it might initially appear.

Mine, with the 16 Happ Competition buttons, two Sanwa JLWs and those lush Seimitsu bubble tops, came in at £190 including VAT and next-day delivery. So for those of us who don't live on the two continents where you're seemingly tripping over arcade cabinets and don't fancy taking a woodworking course, give the Tankstick a second look. It's undeserving of the sneering it seems to attract.

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