Hey Arcade-Gaf. I was hoping I could pick some brains and maybe (for pay) recruit someone to help me out a little? I tried this in the EVO thread, but that moves at breakneck pace.
First, relevant background. I'm a gamer with SMA (a form of Muscular Dystrophy) which is a degenerative neuro-muscular disease. Point is... despite them always being a true love of mine, fighting games are really only accessible to me when using an arcade-stick. No problem right? Well, disability or not, I was quite the baller back in my day, winning shares of SF2 tournaments around the US North-East in the early days. Thing is, being an 80s/90s US arcade kid... I developed ALL my muscle memory on Octagonal Gate arcade sticks. (Hell, even my beloved PS1 Ascii Pad had one).
So now i'm coming out of fighting game retirement, and with ten more years of my disability acting on me and eating away at my muscle-health/strength, etc... I am finding that adjusting to a Square-Gate is just not doing it for me. I own a MvC2 LE Fight-Stick from MadKatz which is beautiful, but just doesn't feel right for me (which is fine as my wife has taken a liking to it).
Anyway... Its time for me to get back in the proverbial game. While I wait for the PS4/XBone to take up the mantle of "fighting game platform", I will be doing 99% of my fighting game playing on PC/Steam. As such, I would like a nice, mid-range fight-stick of some kind, that is obviously PC compatible (I know a few earlier PS3 Madkatz sticks weren't).
Problem is, I also need a Octagonal-Gate which I know no one sells standard. I appreciate that its literally a $3.00 part and a quick fix, but what is an easy fix for most of you proves a little too complicated a task for me physically (and my wife is devoid of tech talent). In a perfect world, pie-in-the-sky dreams, I also love/prefer the style of buttons which had a really feather touch, but distinct "click" where you could hear/feel when you had depressed it enough. The stock set-up on my MvC2 stick again has that kind of "mushier" play where you just push until it stops.
If anyone is feeling helpful, generous, or knows a service of this kind, I would LOVE to just be able to Paypal (Amazon gift-card, whatever...) someone who could get me an arcade stick, and do the modifications for me. I'd obviously pay for all the components, the stick, shipping, and your time/trouble.
Thanks guys. And at the very least, thanks for keeping my fighting spirit thriving with a great Fighting-Game-GAF community, during EVO weekend.