Pro tip: Dealing with 'Left-handed' joysticks: the crossover method

Will — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:36:41 +0000

You might be wondering what I mean by a 'Left-Handed' joystick. Most joysticks that you'll find are set up with the stick on the left and the buttons on the right. Like my fighting stick here.

But (very) occasionally, you'll find an arcade machine set up the other way around, with the buttons on the left and the joystick on the right. They're actually getting to be so rare that I couldn't find one to take a picture of, so we'll just use the magic of image manipulation to pretend.

Now, you could just grab the stick with your right hand and mash the buttons with your left, but I find that after years of doing it the other way, that it's not really that easy.

So what I like to do is to cross my hands so that each one is hitting the controls that it's used to

Sure, it might look a little silly, but believe me, it works a whole lot better than trying to retrain your hands.

Pro Tip of the Day - joysticks

Pro tip: Dealing with 'Left-handed' joysticks: the crossover method