Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

I started making this Xbox 360 arcade stick well before Ecclesia came out and wanted to finish it before Halloween. I've been a fan of Castlevania since the NES game, and just liked the art basically and the main character Shanoa... and that sexy woman who is known as a "Villager"... who I placed on the bottom along with Dracula. I suppose the Xbox 360 controller has nothing to do with a DS game, but I wanted to make a "Halloween" type stick and this fit the bill. I used some of the expensive quilted maple I had left over from the Ivy stick and stained it black this time instead of purple.

Click here to read more...
I wanted to make an arcade stick with an illuminated joystick, I had often made ones with buttons lit up but never the joystick top. The Sanwa JLF joystick's shaft was drilled through hollow and I used a small 3mm red led with a 150ohm resistor powered by the Xbox controller's 5volt line. The "bubbletop" joystick is an orange translucent Sanwa LB39 and the red led gives it a nice deep orange glow when lit. I decided to make the stick all black and gray except for the character art and orange... because well it's Halloween-like and I noticed in some of the art Shanoa's weapon glows orange and there's this whole orange and dark blue thing going on with her in a lot of the art... and circles. I had no idea what the glyph system was in the new Castlevania but I knew it had to do with some magic circle type things. So I used "Arcane Circles" brushes by *redheadstock on deviantArt and placed these graphics inside the clear button plungers.



I'm pretty psyched how it came out, I can play Castle Crashers, Symphony of the Night and most fighters with it now, but I really hope Konami would create a brand new, 100+ hour Castlevania for Xbox Live, WiiWare, and PS3 Network. I'd design the whole thing even, for free! Yeah thats it.

Castle Crashers - Red Knight

From some earlier arcade projects where I changed my mind on design etc, I had quite a collection of some spare parts, actually enough to make a complete arcade stick minus the wood. So I decided to make another MDF arcade stick for my friend based on the Castle Crashers Xbox Live arcade game that released in August.

Click here to read more...

This time I hacked the Xbox 360 controller myself especially since it's a little easier now with the newer revision controllers. I used red Sanwa 30mm and 24mm buttons and a Seimitsu LS-32 controller. The bottom of the case is translucent red acrylic and I simply wired a red led to the 5v line to let you know when its powered on, then I hooked up some red leds to the rumble leads as well so they flash if there's any rumble in the game you're playing.



This is the button layout I used for Castle Crashers:
X,Y,RT,RB
A,B,LT,LB
In the near future I might do a more extravagant blue knight with illuminated buttons and joystick.

Donkey Kong

I have a few SNES controllers from back in the day, one of them was really well worn, it was likely the very one I used to beat Super Metroid, Super Castlevania and a Link to the Past among others. I decided I wanted to make something special out of it so I sent the controller to HarumaN last spring to hack it and here it is now:



Click here to read more...
It's nice that I can use it with a SNES as well as on the PC with Retrousb's adapters. I made the case out of MDF this time, pretty thin profile at 1 and a half inches. The art is from the original Donkey Kong gleaned at localarcade.com


I definitely wanted to make a "throwback" or retro controller here. The 1-Player and 25cent buttons are simply select and start. I used a Sanwa JLF joystick and Sanwa buttons.

Chun Li

The second arcade stick I made last spring was the Chun Li. I bought some curly maple off ebay with a "tiger" type pattern in the figure. I used the same dye method as the Ivy only this time with Sapphire Transfast dye. The Chun Li drawing is from an Official Playstation Magazine cover drawn by Ryan Kinnaird.

The buttons are Ultralux buttons with a graphic placed inside them made out of Mamemarquees transparent marquee material. I used different colored symbols on a "Chinese lantern" type design, preying mantis, butterfly etc that coincide with the Xbox 360 button colors, along with the words Chun and Li in Chinese for the left and right trigger buttons. I used a Sanwa JLF for the joystick. Once again HarumaN hacked up this Xbox 360 controller for me with the 5v line to power the buttons. The bottom of this case is transparent blue acrylic, so I placed some white leds on the rumble motor leads this time to give a blue flash whenever the rumble activates.


Click here to read more...



This might be my best stick thus far, although I have a feeling I may top it in a few days from the time of this posting, we'll see. I used the best figured pieces of the wood I bought from ebay. After the dye, the finish is many layers of Minwax Polycrylic sanded and buffed.

The "Ivy"

I owe a lot of my arcade stick-making abilities to my previous experience with MAME cabinets and the first few people I personally saw make one player sticks: Byrdo, Timoe and Kaytrim.

Using some of their creations as a visual guide, last year I came up with a few ideas of my own. The first arcade stick I ever made was the "Ivy" based on Ivy from the Soul Calibur series. I used some official Ivy art that appeared on the net well before Soul Calibur IV came out.

I wanted to try something different for materials, I had seen many types of hardwoods used on arcade sticks but I had never seen a quilted maple one. Especially a quilted maple one with a "PRS" or Paul Reed Smith style guitar finish. I looked around the internet and found many guides for achieving this finish. This guide in particular I found pretty helpful.

Click here to read more...
I bought a hacked Xbox 360 controller from my friend HarumaN at the arcadecontrols.com forums and built the stick with 7/8" thick wood I bought off ebay.

Normally it's good to keep the arcade stick thin as possible, but for this one and a few future ones 1) I liked the particular wood so I wanted to see some more of it and 2) In some cases I wanted to use some longer Happ/Ultralux buttons than the Seimitsu/Sanwa ones.

I stained the wood once with Transfast dye, then sanded it back down lightly just to take the sye off the "raised" parts of the wood. The dye stayed in the grain areas making them even darker when the second coat of dye was applied.



I illuminated these clear Seimitsu purple "skeleton" buttons with a few leds shining under them. You can also place smaller leds inside each button, but I found that a few leds shining up from the bottom of the case illuminated the buttons fine. Especially since these buttons are not transparent in the middle. HarumaN soldered the 5volt line coming off the Xbox 360 controller to power the leds and left the wires for the rumble motors on so I attached some red leds to these and used a red translucent Wico button as the Xbox guide button which I wired to a red led as well (it looks orange in the pic but it's quite red when lit). The result is when you play games that rumble the bottom of the case flashes with some red leds.





Often times, Timoe especially when he makes sticks will place clear plexiglass on the bottom so you can see the internals of the stick. I did the same here but I used some purple transparent plexi and it has kind of an "ambilight" effect hehe when the button leds are lit and the rumble leds flash.

I was pretty happy with the results, the quilted maple has a great 3D effect that really pops when the light hits it just so.


I placed some skeleton and ivy leaf graphics inside the Seimitsu buttons to go along with the sort of gothic theme. I found these sticks especially useful for 1) Playing Xbox 360 and Live Arcade games that support the controls 2) Playing PC games and emulators that support the controls 3) Using it as a 2,3,4 player option on a MAME arcade cabinet 4) Letting out some creative expression, I've found it fun thinking up a style or theme or paying homage to a certain game through an arcade stick.