I got my F-200 today and figured I would chime in with my experience on the input. I'm happy that garzyboi was able to have so much success. My experience hasn't been quite as good. To be fair, I'm playing Super Street Fighter II on SquidgeSNES v0.396, and I have a feeling some of the frame skipping issues may have bee to blame, but I can't be certain.
To understand my issues with the D-pad, you have to think a little bit about how people use their thumb. Some people like to play closer to the center of the cross, and some people (like myself) like to play a little more towards the outside. If you play closer to the center, then the configuration of the D-pad buttons works in your favor, as the indentation allows your thumb to skim along the inside without much interruption from one button to the next. If you prefer to play more along the outside, it's a different story. From the outside edge, when you want to perform a quarter circle forward, you start with the down button, and slide over to the right. But with the F-200, the right direction is raised with respect to the down button, so as your thumb is sliding across, it hits this high ridge which doesn't feel quite ready to accept your input.
I trained my thumb to perform Street Fighter motions on a SNES pad. It wasn't too hard getting used to the PSX D-pad (although it created a ton of blisters) because regardless of how it was set inside the plastic, it still pivoted around a central point. So as my thumb was moving right from the down direction, the right direction was already beginning to recess a little bit. Likewise, I the timing of the end of the move is different now. I would be done with the move sooner on the SNES pad whereas now I find that my thumb is still on the down direction, so I have to deliberately push more to the right before pressing the attack button.
After about 10 minutes, I was able to perform quarter circles fairly consistantly, charge moves well if I didn't start from down-back (i.e. left -> right and down -> up is easier than down-left -> right and down-left -> up), and dragon punch inputs were difficult, but I'm still working on it.
As I was experimenting more with the F-200, I tried awkwardly positioning my thumb from the upper left corner of the system to the center and play more to the inside of the pad, but I found it to uncomfortable.
All in all, I'm certain that my thumb will eventually "learn" how to deal with this setup just as I learned how to deal with all the others. It's just not automatic. As far as everything else is concerned, the system is great. I'm sick of hearing how people are expecting miracles from a little Korean company that doesn't have nearly the same level of resources as Nintendo or Sony. For the size of the crew that they are, they've made one hell of a product and I will gladly support them. As far as the name of the button to the right of the Select button... who gives a sh!t? Seriously, you're just looking for something to complain about.
And Cervante, the correct name is in fact Hadouken. It means motion wave fist. The original thing that Ryu threw had nothing to do with fire (although the Shakunetsu Hadouken added in Super Street Fighter II does). It was based off the idea that Bruce Lee could punch the flame out of a candle from across the room just by driving his fist through the air in the direction of the candle.
- so those quick changes aren't always smooth. the problem with the stick though, is you can't be as accurate. i guess overall i'd say i'm having an easier time with the d-pad than i had with the stick. but keep in mind i've never tried the rotated mk2 stick.
