Fun at the home arcade

Hi guys, so the other day I aquired A Blaze 'home arcade twin shock' from a guy on ebay. These are quite difficult to come by these days, and can go for a high price.

Let's take a peek at it shall we? (arcade stick is NOT a euphemism for  something else as you can see...)

This is the 'standard' silver version and not the 'special edition' black one. This uses cheap type parts, buttons are not micro-switched; instead they are connected to PCBs with standard buttons (they work the same way as standard game controllers, remote controls, etc).

The sticks themselves are micro-switched, but they are el-cheapo made. It's in decent condition, a few scuffs at the front, but this can be touched up.

Being a playstation stick, I can use it on the PS1, PS2, Dreamcast (via EMS adapters), and on the PC (via any old cheap USB adapter) so pretty much it's a universal controller.

Trying it out I noticed a couple of problems with the button placement; start and select are too easy to accidentally hit while in game (pausing the game). It has a 'slow' button which really is just like hitting start over and over. A common feature on third party controllers from the megadrive days and as it was even back then, it is rather redundant.

One of the sticks was faulty, but was an easy fix. One of the micro switches in the left stick was stuck inwards so a quick disassemble of the case, then the stick part itself, and a quick poke with a screwdriver (get that dirty thought out of your mind right now!) it clicked back into place and now works as designed. Is that good or bad? well...

Since they are cheap parts, the sticks are rubbish for fighters such as Street Fighter, and King of Fighters. A right pain in the arse to pull off moves. For fighters you really need quality arcade parts such as from sanwa. Buttons are ok though....

I will be modding this later on, but it will take allot of work. For the buttons as they are not standard 30mm like sanwa, I'll have to use 24mm ones instead. Others have used Korean crown buttons for this, but they are hard to find in the UK, and probably would be expensive anyway. I have found some 24mm standard arcade buttons on gremlin solutions, so as long as they are not too long (limited room inside the casing) then those should be fine. As for sticks, I would like sanwa ones but I'll need to dremil and drill and such to get them mounted inside the case. One thing I will be doing is relocating the start and select buttons to the top row, getting rid of the 'slow' button and putting the turbo buttons where the start and select are now.

So there you have it! with a bit of work, this will be used as my control pannel on my future arcade machine setup ;-) saves me making one from scratch! not bad at £25 + £5 postage.

Thanks for reading!