[Tech] Back On The Stick - Yuki Terumi Theme

When I first introduced my friend to fighting games, I convinced him after some time to invest into a joystick controller. I never realized how much I pressured him into it simply because I wanted an excuse to build another one. That was several years ago when Blazblue Continuum Shift was released on the Playstation 3. I helped him do the internal work, while I left the construction of the controller case to his father. The design of it had so many things wrong with it, the product designer in me couldn't let that sit.

It was considerably heavy, because they used two-by-fours to construct the frame.

It was unnecessarily large, because they used two-by-fours to construct the frame.

It was also difficult to pick up with one hand, something most joystick users are accustomed to now, because they used two-by-fours to construct the frame.



So I bugged him about this over the course of a year or two, and he finally gave in. And just like last time, I let him decide on the size, except I was giving him less than a handful of options that made more sense to me than a case built with two-by-fours.




Here's the raw of it. Drastically smaller than the big box he's had before. The case is an 11x14" artist panel. Using one of these saves me the trouble of having to build one from scratch and it costs less too! As always, each stick I build features a new procedure, new material, technique or idea. This time, creating glossy sides and a bottom panel that doesn't use feet.



The top sheet of plexiglas and bottom masonite were taken from the previous controller and resized. The theme of the stick as as the post title says is created after Yuki Terumi's colour palette. Yuki is a Blazblue character playable in the recently released Blazblue Chronophantasma.





For this stick, I've used the Zero Delay Rematch PCB. Low price, solderless, wires already included, super tiny board, works on the Playstation 1, 2 and 3, as well as the PC and Mac being detected as a Playstation Sixaxis controller. For $20, I can't argue with the price. Only downside is the cable to hook up the Sanwa JLF's pcb is way too short.



The side was routed so that the 24mm buttons would be flush with the side wall.



I've kept the edge transparency like the red acrylic stick. Makes it visually stimulating.



I did away with the 4 feet this time and covered up the masonite with a sheet of foam instead.



Here I end off showing how bright that fluorescent green lights up when light hits it a certain way. Mmm-hmm!