I honestly believe that all this fuss about “arcade sticks” is just marketing, hype and childhood nostalgia… I understand the nostalgia well for I too grew up amongst arcades, plus the part that what you learn as a kid stays with you, but still, c’mon! Let’s drop that urban myth already!
Especially for 2D side-scrolling fighting games like KI, Street Fighter, MK etc a stick is just extra space for nothing; can never be as fast, nor as immediate as a good D-pad. Furthermore, in KI for example, you often need to press 2 buttons or even 3 buttons at the same time. With a controller, these can be mapped to a single button press. Once you get used to said mapped button, you will be getting the desired effect every single time 100%. But with an arcade stick, during tough situations, there will always be a fear and a chance that you might just miss timing two/three buttons as one and ■■■■■ up your input…
Thing is, the average arcade stick is of better quality than the average controller… But, with a quality controller such as the Elite for example, you 're good to go… Firstly, its traditional, non-satellite disk D-pad is a stellar one for fighting games. In KI’s case you can map all the action buttons on the right side of the controller, leaving the left hand just for the D-pad. After some repeated use, the paddles do become 2nd nature, I know they have for me… Add to this that you can pull out of the way the left stick, shorten the trigger to bumper-like levels and increase right stick sensitivity for ultra quick breakers, and you got yourself control potential that no arcade stick could ever match