The Real Truth behind the Pelican: Real Arcade stick

[Shapermc]

Pelicans, I hate Pelicans!

Well, not really. This is a more of a borderline review of a controller that I have heard WAY too much about.


There she is. Ain’t she the cats meow? Well, yea, I know. It is slightly ugly. First I will rip her apart with a horrible review:

I will refer to the pelican Real Arcade stick as the RAS for the rest of this.

Stick: Crap. What a horrible stick. This thing is like a bad Happs Super. It is a mock leaf-switch style for the micro-switches. For a exposed view of the super go here and you will see what I mean about the mock leaf switch. The main difference between this and the Super is that the Super is decent and has a 4/8 way option. The metal is so close to the stick that any movement sets these thins off and it also suffers from the occasional snap back (when holding down and then letting go the micro-switch will get hit and register as an up movement).

Buttons: Crap. I mean come on. They could have at least put good springs in the plungers. I got this thing home and the top left button (which is the L1 button) was slow coming up. Like it had peanut butter in it or something. The spring that I am talking about is actually inside the button, not on the micro-switch or anything. You have to open it up to see, the plunger is the part of the button that is not stationary and contacts the micro-switch (e.g. the part you press). The cheap spring means that while in use the button is mainly dependant on the micro-switch pushing up on the plunger. This makes the retraction of the plunger slower and has a very shoddy feel.

Design: Bomb! Actually I really like it. That picture is not a good representation of the thing. It is massive. It is even rounded out for those of you who have a beer gut . Seriously this thing is all wood and has decent t-molding running around the edge. It is cheap MDF, but it is a good width. It feels really solid and the buttons are spaced and arranged quite well. The start and select buttons are out of the way, I like this. On a lot of sticks I find that they try to stick the start and select buttons under your palm or somewhere else just as asinine.

So, if I dislike it this much why did I take the time to do this little review? Well this is actually a really good stick for 2 reasons:

1) It seems like folk who are not regularly found in arcades swoon over this stick (this is an assumption, no flames please). Well I can understand why, the thing is damn close. It is just as good as an X-Arcade stick (if you get all good buttons, like I said I got one really bad button and that was not good) as far as quality and up to par with the Red-Octane stick (albeit I like the design of the Pelican better).
2) This is the equivalent of if Fisher Price was to release a “My First Arcade Stick”. This stick was designed to be hacked. This was designed to have all the buttons torn out and replaced with good buttons and a new good stick. This is the stick to get if you have ever wanted to hack a pad, but feared not succeeding and wasting a bunch of money (I know your out there).

I will expand on part 2 for a while. I bought this stick so that I could take it apart. That was my full intention from the beginning. This stick will become what an X-Arcade stick should be for the same price. You can cut corners on this and probably do it for even cheaper than I will. I will outline my plan.

- Sanwa Joystick. This is similar to the Agetec Dreamcast stick, but much tighter. I will be ordering it from ultimarc.com and estimating it at $33 shipped (I estimated it high)
- Happs Competition Buttons. I plan on replacing all the face buttons on this thing. The start and select buttons work, and I will never need them as responsive as the face buttons. Happs has the color coating that I want. The setup for the stick is like this:

OOOO : L1, Square, Triangle, R1
OOOO : L2, X, Circle, R2


If you look at the colors for the 4 face buttons you will see that they all have a different color. Happs Sells Purple, Green, blue and red buttons. I will get one of each of these and 4 black buttons. On each of the black button, from a hobby shop, I will acquire some way of putting the associated button on the black ones by stencil or something for L1, R1, ect. I estimate this to be $19.60 ($1.70 per button plus $6 shipping), again overestimating.

Now the only other thing I plan on getting is a Pushbutton wrench s $2.35 and I included the shipping with the other happs parts.

So what do we total out at? Let’s see, calculations round us up at… $55. I hope that the shipping is a little less overall setting me at around $50. Nonetheless this totals out to less than an X-Arcade and it will be far superior to one.

How to save money on this? Well I will tell you. Get a Competiton Stick and save about $20 ($18 in shipping and it is $2 less than a Sanwa stick). So that brings your total down to about $35. Not bad huh?

So now, you ask, why is this so easy? Well I shall tell you. This project can be done with a pair of wire cutters and a box off at least 24 female .187 (3/16") terminal quick connects (you can get this for under $2 at any hardware store or Radio Shack). The micro-switches that are currently in the RAS are really shoddy NO (Normally Open) only micro’s. The wires that got to the micros will either be colored or black/white. The black/white ones are the grounds and they are all on the tops of the micros. The wires are soldered to the micro’s terminals. I recommend that you cut each one individually and then tape them together and label them (like L1, X, R2, ect…).

After they are labeled you can then strip them and crimp on the quick connects female ends. When you have every thing done for the buttons, you can then take off the micro-switches from the buttons and unscrew the plastic nut. Then just take the buttons out and you will have a gaping hole. You can put the new buttons that you get from Happs in and then screw them into place and put the micro-switch in.

On the micro-switch you will see that written really small by the side terminals N.O. and N.C (normally open and normally closed terminal). Connect the colored wire (not the ground) to the one labeled N.O. Do this to all the buttons. If you wanted you could re-arrange the button set up at this point, just make sure you know what you connected to what.

Now to the joysticks. Ok, I want to mention that the micro-switches on the underside of the Stick are bAss-ackwards. You can find out which is up and which is down by moving the stick and noticing the results. Your smart, I know you can figure it out. Now you need to remove the stick from the base. There is this little ¾ circle shaped thing that needs to be removed then it will all fall apart. If you go to the competions exposed mounting image the piece I am speaking of is numbered 43-0019-00. There you go, you recognize it. Take that off of the crap stick that Pelican put in.

Now you just put the new one in and then, like with the buttons follow the quick connect procedure, hook up the stick you bought. Trust me at this point you will notice why I said all that other stuff is crap. This seems long, but I bet that when your working on it you could have the whole thing done in under an hour (once you have all the parts together) and that is if you be careful and take your time.

Now your probably worried about what happens if you screw up on the wiring? Well don’t worry. The worst thing that will happen is it won’t work. Just make sure that you test it before you screw the bottom back on. You can’t really fry anything, and you don’t have to worry about mistakes with soldering. This thing is practically fool proof. Even if you rip the wire out of the connector you could always get another Molex connector for quite cheap.

The best part? This stick appears to be the same thing, but for all 3 systems. If you wait until November to get that one and then mod it I can almost guarantee that you will never have to worry about another joystick for the next… 15 years, at least!

Now, aside from that, I will start more strenuous play of Armed Police Batrider tonight.

[Cheebs]

Great post. I remember seeing these sticks in Funcoland and thinking how much ass they'd kick if they didn't have crap buttons and a crap stick. I really like the shape, weight, and spacing myself. I have a bunch of Happ pushbuttons and a Happ joystick at home myself. Do standard size american stlye arcade pushbuttons fit into the holes when you remove the crappy Pelican buttons?

[Shapermc]

Do standard size american stlye arcade pushbuttons fit into the holes when you remove the crappy Pelican buttons?

Yup That is the great thing about it. Easy as hell. The buttond might need a firm smacking to fit in, but aside from that no problems. I tested it myself with spare crappy parts last night.

Have fun.

Edit:

BTW in store this stick only costs $50.

[Cheebs]

Hmmm.... I'll have to bring a tape measure with me to Funcoland. If the box is big enough to hold a small style MVS board I might have to buy one and finish up my portable MVS project.

I imagine if I took the cart slot off of the main board and put it elsewhere the board could be quite small.

[Shapermc]

I imagine if I took the cart slot off of the main board and put it elsewhere the board could be quite small.

I don't like to mess around with that kind of stuff... but I bet it would work actually. You would have to get a little inventive about space, but the nicest part is that there is a containment area for the cord that would be ohh so easy to remover.

The controller can come out of the box w/o opening it also. I can take measurements of it if you would like.

[Cheebs]

Cool. That would be great.

[Shapermc]

Ok I attached the following images:
The dimensions. The one on the left is an overhead view, then one on the right is a side view. Both diagrams are in inches and neither are measuring the top peice.

The guts. This thing opened and turned upside down.

The buttons. An old crap one (red) and the ones that come with the RAS (black)

See the new buttons fit. Cool huh? From the point of getting it open to the point of putting in one new button took about 2-4 min. Quite easy.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: 2 things.
1) See how the lower microswitch holder on the right sticks out more? That makes it a slightly tricky fit, but IIRC the competition buttons do not stick out like that.
2)That big black thing of plastic hold the cord for the thing. It could be easily removed, but as you can see the PCB for the controller is mounted on it.

[Josh]

Just in case any of you were wondering, replacing the buttons is a BITCH.

I'm halfway done, and I'm actually sweating.

Also, make sure your buttons are alligned properly (switch placement) because once they are in, they sure as fuck are not coming out.

Question. What is wrong with the stock microswitches?

Is there any real reason to swap them before they fail?

[Shapermc]

What buttons are you using? I have found that this makes the difference greatly.

[GohanX]

Personally, I love the stick, but as you say it is like a Fisher Price first real joystick (aside from Neo Geo sticks) ...I've never really had my hands on a good arcade stick since arcades around here are ASS, and nothing mass produced is any good. Perhaps if I ever got my hands one a good custom build job I would think worse of the stick...

I think the buttons are fine, but I may think about switching out the stick sometime in the future.