This is the old square gate. In retrospect, it would have been way cooler if I had taken a photo of the octagon gate in its casing next to all the wires, while I had the stick open. But I didn't do that.
I have now installed an octagon gate inside of Christine's old fight stick, so that I can play Symphony of the Night with it, so that I can do SOTN speedrunning tricks without my RSI flaring up like it does when I shield-dash on a pad. I have high hopes for this.
I said I wasn't going to stream this weekend, but maybe I will stream SOTN tomorrow to test out some Techniques. Or maybe I will not. Life is full of surprises.
If none of the above post made sense to you:
- When speedrunning Symphony of the Night, the fastest way to move around is to repeatedly mash the ✕ and ◯ buttons. My upper wrist muscles are basically constantly on the verge of calling it quits already due to spending the last 32 years on the computer, so I can't do this.
- It's legal to run Symphony of the Night with a fighting stick. On the fighting stick, I found I could map ✕ and ◯ to two vertically adjacent buttons and shield dash by sort of rocking my palm back and forth, a motion which does not stress my dying arm muscles.
- When I tried to actually play the game though I ran into various awful problems with fighting-game style inputs (like the three-quarter circles needed for the critically important wing smash move) not being accepted, and with the special weapons firing at random.
- Christine explained this was all happening because the fight stick had a "square gate", which means it prefers to go diagonally rather than any cardinal direction.
- It turns out you can get an "octagon gate" for like $4. Plus $20 shipping if you happen to be in Canada. But $4.
