As I’ve explained on Flickr, Memorial Day I woke up with a burst of inspiration to create, so I began taking a more serious look at creating joysticks as a product to sell here on Desktoparcade.com. I spent a couple of hours looking at dozens of different sticks from several different sources, from “people like me” (hobbyists/garage work shop enthusiasts) to mass marked products like Mad Catz and Hori. After close consideration and analysis, I came to the conclusion that the mass marketed sticks are plastic/metal hunks of junk that STILL take shortcuts (even the Mad Catz TEs take shortcuts in my opinion, feel free to disagree if you wish). I noticed that a lot of joysticks from “people like me” had a certain formula, so I made a trek to my local hardware store to get a nice piece of wood and I began building.

By the end of the day, only a few hours later, I had this to show for my labor. I was very happy with what I made, so I did some light Google Image searching and one of the first things that popped up for “Ryu” looked perfect given the nice, rich “Sedona Red” stain I had given the prototype joystick. The next morning I had the design printed at my local place of choice, and I added it to the controller. What I had before me was like nothing I created before:

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One day several years ago I was in my workshop working on orders when I caught a glimpse of my stock shelf (located in the back of my work shop) and saw the pile of large, 4 foot wide boxes I built up for IIDX doubles decks. I had built up way more than I had orders for, and I was in the mood to create so I grabbed one and did some measurements with my drill guides for the Pop’n and IIDX controllers. It was possible for me to squeeze the Pop’n Music buttons (with arcade spacing, of course) and a Beatmania IIDX controller on one of these 4 foot monsters. I didn’t create it intending to sell many (if any) of them, I just did it because I could. Just because one can create something, does that mean they should? I don’t know, you guys tell me…

God this thing is huge!
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This one is from deep in the archives and was built in the Fall of 2004. Pop’n Music 10 was just being released for PS2 and a customer requested a Pop’n Music 10 themed controller which of course Sarah and I happily did because the character art for Mimi and Nyami are adorable for Pop’n 10′s theme!

The controller not only features Mimi and Nyami in their cheek-pinchingly adorable Halloween garb from the game’s theme, but it also features a beautiful night time fade as the background of the controller, taken right from the game’s start screen! This controller was requested a couple of times after I posted the pictures of this on Bemanistyle, and each time I was pretty excited to do it because I love the character art from 10 a lot.

Here is a picture of the controller before the big holes are drilled for the giant dome pushbuttons (Unfortunately this picture does not resize, for some reason I saved it really small and since it’s from 6 years ago I can’t seem to find the raw images from my camera)

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What do you get when you cross Mega Man and Beatmania IIDX besides one hard game? Why, an awesome custom controller from Desktop Arcade and Sarah Moulder, of course!

This controller was commissioned long ago and comes to us via the archives. It features a flipable key panel (so that you can play “right side” and “left side”, “Mega Man blue” paint under the plexiglass (along with an awesome, hand drawn Mega Man logo) and “that blue guy” hand painted on the controller shell striking that iconic pose of his from the Mega Man 1 title screen. Thankfully the customer wanted his game appearance and not that awful box art version of Mega Man, which as we all know is quite a horrid depiction.

And now, the pictures!

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