« MAS Reveals New American-Style Optical Joystick Lever, Examined By ArcadeShock »

Southern Californian-based company Multi Arcade System announced a new product in their family that is reminiscent of an older time of arcade sticks.

MAS were once the company preferred amongst fighting game fans for providing full arcade sticks with parts found in American arcade cabinets for the home market. They still exist today and while they have added a hint of Japanese parts the community primarily uses, they stayed true to their original and recognizable body design as well as keeping the lever American style.

Now they announced their own optical joystick lever titled the "Opticon," reminiscent of Happ's Perfect 360 lever. Instead of microswitches, optical sensors are used to confirm movement inputs and as well as minimize movement sound. MAS intends to keep the Opticon affordable for those who uses American-style arcade sticks.

You can check out more details about the stick as well as a test by ArcadeShock after the jump! Stay tuned for more info in the future!

Yeah, it’s hard, stiff and smooth at the same time.   What could it possibly be?  Hehe.  Don’t get any bad thoughts here.   If you’re an old geezer, you may have heard of MAS, which stands for Multi Arcade System.  Based out of Orange County, CA (yes a product that actually comes out of the USA), consider them the pioneers of the arcade stick for home use. Initially, they started out with their Super Nova System, which allows JAMMA boards (arcade pcbs) to be played on your normal television (these are still being produced today).   To bring the arcade experience home, they produced arcade style joysticks that mimicked the ones from the arcade control panels.   The typical parts consists of the Happ Control joystick and pushbuttons.

Today, MAS has stuck to their guns and kept their original design intact, literally down to the staples they use to construct their stick.  The only major revision that they have made up to this point is they have mini versions of their full size arcade stick, which MAS calls the PRO STICK.

Fast forward to the present and the future.  We received a call from them with some news, which in our minds was some minor change to their stick design and maybe a new capture board (they also make an RGB to NTSC converter), which they have been planning an upgrade for quite some time.  Nope, it was not what we expected.

For days, they kept calling us and because we were traveling at the time, we never had a chance to call them, so when we did, we thought this news had to be more than just something minor.  Finally we  were able to touch base and the first thing we heard was “what do you think about us making an optical joystick?”  Our response, “yeah, that sounds great, but Happ has had one for years and bottom line is, what will it cost consumers?”  Skipping through our hour long discussion of what the pros and cons were to make this happen, we needed a test sample and there is no other determining factor to making this work than to rigorously test it out.

Now to go over a few details, there are a few manufacturer’s out there that make optical gates/joysticks on the market, but thus far, they’ve all been quite high in price, ranging from $60-86.00, which only a handful of gamers would consider.  One thing we’ve learned in the FG  market is the product has to be solid, otherwise, even if the product costs $45.00 bucks, it wouldn’t matter if doesn’t perform.  Joystick parts in the FG scene isn’t just for leisure play anymore, as for some, it’s a career, so it’s precision and functionality has to be top notch.

Performance

We have tested two versions of their Opticons.  The first version uses the same spring (resistance) that you find in HAPP’s Competition stick, which they call a ‘medium’ spring or moderate resistance and in real world usage, allows the stick to return to the neutral position faster than the ‘soft’ spring, slower than the ‘hard’ spring (which is found in Happ’s P360 stick).  The difference in spring tension is important for some users depends on their style of gameplay and or game that requires complex circular moves in a short period of time.   For this reason, we chose King of Fighters XIII as  a test for both springs, as the more complex combos in this game require more precise timing, than the majority of fighters out there.

Using the medium spring along with MAS’s Opticon is very similar to Sanwa Denshi’s Silent Stick and just as sensitive, if not more.   For this first version, some tweaking definitely had to be done to perfect the timing of the controls as the optic sensors were not optimized (leveled at the right height and error corrections prevented from interference from one sensor to another).  What this caused was some timing issues depending on the direction of the motion, which was consistently off, but it wasn’t anything major that couldn’t be adjusted.

A few weeks later, MAS finished up a beast of a stick for us, weighing in at 13 lbs, this thing is almost as heavy as Hori’s VLX Premium Sticks, yet our focus here was the revised Opticon, this time with a hard spring.  This is the exact same spring used in Happ Control’s P360 stick.   We suggested MAS to do this for the obvious reason of being able to compare the two head to head.  So how did it stack up?   After two weeks of testing, we found that both sticks are quite close.  One not better than the other, except MAS’s Opticon is smoother, less friction, but that only has to do with the casing it’s housed in.  In terms of timing and precision, from gameplay tests we pulled of difficult specials canceling into EX moves into special moves without a hitch and did it over and over again.  Of course, we would expect no less, especially if a heated battle is on the line.

Construction

According to MAS, they aren’t reinventing the wheel here.   We asked if they plan to sell the unit by itself, which some manufacturers have done for the Japanese sticks, but like Happ Controls, MAS will sell the stick as a whole.  For now, they are focusing on the American style joysticks as that’s what their market is, but promises other products to come, which they plan to keep under wraps until a solid production piece is near completion.

Costs/Options

In our eyes, there is no point in making a product that equals another for the same price.  Unless you don’t want to move product, that mindset works, but either make it a heck of a lot better or make it better for less.  Currently, the P360 seems to have priced themselves out of the market.    With the Japanese sticks gaining so much momentum with their normal microswitch sticks and recently introducing the Silent Sticks, the average gamer would not fork out $86.00 for a P360, which is what HAPP Control currently is asking for now.  MAS promises that their Opticon will bring this down to $35.00 retail for either a medium or hard spring joystick, all inclusive.  From what we’ve seen thus far, we have no doubt that this will move in large numbers compared to what’s out there on the market.

MAS expects to have a full release of these sticks by the end of April 2013 and we’ll keep you posted when we’ll find out more.