I grew up with an arcade stick in my hand, right? To me that will always feel comfortable, but um, the best counter-example to Street Fighter and that paradigm that they-they kind of advanced, really like over 20 years ago, um, is Dive Kick. It’s a game made by Iron Galaxy. You have two buttons - dive and kick. That’s it. Um, and despite that limited control space, they managed to create a game that is, I would say every bit as - every bit as much a fighting game as a Street Fighter with six buttons, or a virtual fighter with three buttons, and the joystick and whatever, right? Um, we’ve seen more fighting games adapting keyboards, and keyboard-like control instruments as a way of-of controlling your character. So, I love the arcade stick - I think there’s a beauty to it. I love that using, you know, using the stick itstelf-itself engages a whole bunch of my, of my-my arm muscles, right? Like, I can change execution based on how I hold it, based on my fingers, and how they’re positioned around the stick, but also how much I want to lean my shoulder into it or my forearms, or whatever, right? Like, there’s a-there’s a really rich opportunity to uh, personalize the way you use that, the stick, um, in a way that I feel like I personally don’t feel as much as with a control pad or, you know. any other kind of control mechanisms, um, so certainly it’s near and dear to my heart, but I don’t think that it’s perfect, and it’s actually interesting because it’s only been in this recent generation of fighting games, again, starting from 2008, 2009, that we’ve seen a significant uh, proportion of players play on console with game pads. That was never an option if you’re playing Street Fighter in the arcades, right? Um, there were, like, Japanese arcades would occasionally let you plug in a PS, uh, a PlayStation pad or something, but for the most part, it was arcade sticks only, and if you wanted to learn how to play the competitive level, you had to learn how to use an arcade stick.
