Question about Ascii Stick FT Special for Dreamcast.

[panzeroceania]

I was wondering if the Ascii Stick FT Special for Dreamcast with a black body, white face plate, and yellow buttons has a stock optical stick.

I know many of the blue Ascii Stick FTs were supposed to but I'm not sure about this one.

I am looking at these two models now.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m570&_nkw=ascii+stick+FT&_sacat=See-All-Categories

I'd be interested if they do use optical sticks, but if not, it's not worth the price to me at the moment.

Any information would be great.

[NFG]

Two hundred bucks!  WTF.

They're not optical.  In fact, I don't remember any of the DC sticks having optical mechs, only the playstation ones.

I have changed my opinion of the opticals, if it means anything to you.  I really liked the default 8-way gate, but otherwise I prefer the mechanical ones.

[panzeroceania]

well shit, I wasn't planning on buying them at that price, but I was going to try to bargain if they were optical.

It's more out of morbid curiosity than anything. I've never used an optical stick, and sanwa flash's are even more impossible to find and expensive.

I guess I'll keep my eyes peeled for cheaper PS2 sticks then.

Thanks for the heads up.

[NFG]

I used to have a bunch! 

http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/620-ASCII-Playstation-2-Optical-Joysticks  <- I don't think any of them survived the flood.  =(

[Fwirt]

When you said optical joysticks, I thought you meant analog optical joysticks... I've never even heard of digital optical joysticks. That being said, looking at the mechanism in those Sanwa opticals that Lawrence linked to, I wonder how difficult it would be to replace the microswitches in something like a JLF with an optical system. Personally, I find mechanical actuators (in just about everything) very satisfying, so I probably wouldn't go for something like that, but I wonder if other people would...

[panzeroceania]

Sorry to hear that Lawrence, that must have been pretty devastating.

I like microswitches a lot, but I've heard good things about optical sticks too, and as a collector I'm very curious. I'll probably have to pick one up off of yahoo auctions or something similar.

Another motivator is that I want to get my brother into using an arcade stick, but as much as I try to convince him that microswitches are very good and accurate, he doesn't like the sound of them clicking and says they sound "cheap".

well that's a bunch of bullocks but at least with an optical stick he couldn't argue that. Of course I suppose I could try to dampen the noise coming from the stick also.