History

The first game I played on a console was Super Mario Bros. The first game I played on a PC was The Secret of Monkey Island. And the first game I played on a arcade machines was Street Fighter 2.

I've been an avid gamer ever since. I played Counter-Strike 1.0 semi-professionally on PC with a CRT monitor and I've played a lot for leisure on many different consoles in the last 4 decades. All those different titles, genres and systems over the years had a profound impact on what I consider to be good software and hardware. 

2017 was the first time I seriously pursued building custom arcade sticks. With MadCatz still being around they were the perfect base to design custom metal faceplates and build leverless controllers. I also delved into woodworking and build my personal wooden fightstick. Unfortunately back then, doing completely original designs was very labor intensive and therefore expensive, while the player base was comparatively small. So while I was doing custom work, it was just not the time to do any own designs from the ground up.

All of this changed in 2023 with the release of Street Fighter 6. It was a surprise over-night hit and in my personal opinion, the most captivating fighting game made up to date. I just had to build a leverless controller specifically made for that. Since 3d printing became affordable in recent years it was as easy as ever to quickly prototype different layouts. And with GP2040 running on RP2040 boards you could build those controllers as affordable as ever without having to rely on expensive fighting board manufacturers. It is truly a great time to be a part of the fighting game community, that seems to be thriving once again.