Learning Leverless: Prologue

 Welcome to a brand new ongoing series! In these series of blogs, I'll be discussing my progress with learning how to play on a leverless/ hitbox controller. 

HIS-Story

The leverless vs controller vs arcade stick debate has been going on since the first Hitbox hit the market and the chatter has not died down. As hardcore child of the late 80's where arcades in Australia ( where I grew up) was plentiful I learned and only really cared about playing fighting games on a arcade stick. I cut my teeth in Tekken Tag Tournament (the original), Tekken 5 and various King of Fighters on arcade sticks and it was what I was used too. When I entered tournaments on console, which was rare because we had arcade machines, I used an arcade stick as well. One of my first and the one I have the most fondest memories of was the Namco original PSOne stick, made pretty much for Tekken and Soul Caliber.

I even brought this stick with me when I came to live in America. Speaking of, when I first got to America I was blown away by how much the fighting game scene or FGC (fighting game community) had moved on from arcades because arcades were almost dead there. Pretty much all major fighting games were now played on consoles and a lot of people including many of people I played games with, only knew how to play Tekken on the Playstation controller which is what they grew up on.

Without getting bogged down in the details, overtime I stuck with my arcade stick and most of my friends stuck with their pad controllers. They were a couple outliers who still used arcade sticks but I was definitely in the minority. I went through many and when I say many, I mean many arcade sticks during my time here in the US. However it was during the middle of the lifespan of Tekken 7 one of my good friends Justin gave me a very sturdy arcade stick for Christmas. This became my real signature stick and the irony that it had Soul Caliber art on it but I never every really played Soul Caliber was always a funny irony and butt of some jokes. 

This stick lasted me my whole Tekken 7 competitive lifespan as well as any other fighting games I tried out a long the way (KOF 15, Ultra Street Fighter 5, Thems Fightin' Herds all come to mind) but as time went on, the wear and tear got to it and soon certain inputs were not coming out and one button in particularly was staying very sticky and unresponsive. It was also ironically the button I was using the most with Swift Master in DNF Duel.  I was not 100% fussed through because I was slowly getting dis-enchanted with Tekken 7 especially due to the pandemic and fighting game tournaments going on hiatuses and just feeling I've done all I wanted to do in the game. More important I realized now is I wanted more than what I had been doing and the big break (even if it was involuntarily)from the FGC and Tekken helped realized it was time for a new challenge. I wanted to spread my wings and explore a brand new genre of fighting games and I wanted to give it an honest try at the same time since I realized I needed a new peripheral I wanted to go all the way and try a different approach as well.

Anime- Air Dashing- All Buttons

My interest in the Anime fighting game community (a sub-genre of the FGC) was always in the background, going to tournaments where Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Under-Night In-Birth was being run I would watch in fascination as these games moved at almost break neck pace and the chaos that was constantly flying around. Coming from a game which was originally very grounded like Tekken and Virtua Fighter, this caught my eye more than once. I even recall trying a version of Guilty Gear for awhile in my early Tekken 6 days but it never really caught my attention.

It all changed when the pandemic hit. All of a sudden, away from the restrictions of having to play Tekken constantly I started branching out and the games I found the most fun were air dashers. I really enjoyed learning Thems Fightin' Herds to the point where I almost want to go mainstream with it and attend tournaments to play it and thanks to Xbox Game Pass I picked up BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and really enjoyed its dynamics as well. However, what real clinched the deal was getting DNF Duel for free thanks to the Epic game store. Learning DNF Duel with my old arcade sticks and a new mini Hori which I brought purely because I was interested in it really made me want to take it more seriously. When I got Spectre from the DLC, I even got more invested but sadly I realized no one was playing DNF Duel so I would get no competition locally or otherwise and fighting games do not really peak for people unless you have competition.

However there were 2 other anime game scenes which were popping and both were pulling in more crowds then DNF Duel could ever dream of doing so I had to make a choice on my next big game to main. After careful deliberating and deciding which game would suit me more I ended up choosing Under-Night In-Birth aka UNI. Specially its newly released sequel Sys:Celes. I have discuss reasons why I ended up picking UNI2 over GranBlue Fantasy Versus: Rising in a previous PIT STOP on this very blog space.

Weapon of Choice

So we have arrived at the meat of the matter. First, I wanted to try learning leverless but I did not know if it'll work for me and the entry price for most leverless controllers can go up to $200-$300 easily. Also the cost is second to waiting for them to arrive and most of the more popular ones are out of stock. The one that interested me the most through was the Snackbox Micro, it looked cool, was cost effective and I have seen a fair amount of people locally and in Youtube videos talk about it and how good it is. Whilst looking up and alternative whilst I waited for a new supply of the Snackbox to become available, I found some alternatives and watched plenty of Youtube videos and one video in particular helped.

In the end we picked up this bad boy

The technical product name for it is the 'Fighting Box' or 'Flatbox Arcade Fight Stick Mini' even tho it has no stick lol so I've taken to calling it just Flatbox. Also because it was my first purchase from Ali Express who shipped it to me, I got it for less then $50. Less than $50 versus $200 you can see why I decided to try it this way instead. Speaking of shipping, originally I was not supposed to get it for almost 3 weeks but it actually arrived a lot sooner than expected and even before I ready to purchase UNI2 so I've been road testing it with DNF Duel of course.

Speaking more on the Flatbox, I could tell you get what you paid for, the whole device is 3D printed with the exception of the electronic motherboard that powers it. It doesn't feel cheap tho and its actually very pleasing to touch, at least for me. The material might not be grade A but it gets the job done and I knew what I was getting myself into before I purchased it (again thanks to Youtube videos and my own research). It came with a basic USB to USB-c connector (which I promptly replaced with my own, longer, corded one which I recently purchased for my cell phone and ended up no longer needing) and some tools to help with the replacing the buttons and a couple spare buttons (more on that later). It was packaged nicely with foam and bubble wrap surrounding to make sure it was tossed and turned during its journey from China. It is all black as the photo shows but I always said to myself because it is so easily customizable that I will make some changes once I enjoy using it more. Of course one of the big issues with it is it is only compatible with PCs and the Switch but to make it compatible with other consoles straight out the box I needed to pay a little bit more and again this was my test drive and I really only play fighters on my Steam Deck lately. Overall, it was a good purchase, the price point was amazing and I received it relatively quickly.

Growing Pains (in my hands)

Day one, one thing I was blown away is by how small it really is. Of course I saw it dimensions during the videos I watched but to actually have it in my lap and my hands on top of it I realized when they said Mini, they meant Mini. Comparing to another Mini I recently brought, it almost the same size but this one is not a stick so it definitely feels much more comfortable so there is that. However comfort is relative because after a couple hours of 'practicing' with it, my hands started cramped up from how I am using it.

Mini meet Mini

So a lot of videos discussing leverless/ all button controllers mention the best way to use it is to pretend you are typing with your fingers hovering above the keys or like you are playing the piano. My big problem is, I never really subscribed to the floating hand keyboard style and I think to my last days I will be typing the way I learned it which is with only a couple fingers. I can convinced it is because I am a gamer and it how I hold gaming controllers and sticks through all my childhood. I could go off tangent and tell a story about how a job once tried to teach me the optimal way of typing but they soon changed their mind once they saw how fast I typed the way I do and said to stick to what I knew. Anyhow, the hovering approach was giving me hand cramps and it was what I was afraid of. I was undaunted through and was determined to keep at it that was until I got very, very sick.

Ever since December, I have been dealing with a cold and a cough that has been ruining everything. The cough has got so bad, sometimes I would cough for hours without nothing to show for it. This particularly week it got so bad that I had trouble breathing too. It was not fun and I was so out of it, sickness-wise I could not bother to play any video games let alone learn a new controller. I however saw my doctor (nice guy btw), got some good meds and have since been feeling much better (through the cough is sticking around... yay *sarcasm*). 

The good news ever since I started feeling better, I have been able to use the Flatbox much more and get accustomed to it. I have now spent 2 full days just working out finger placements and learning little tricks like using what used to be my attack button fingers to tap movement buttons, I know it sounds funny but one thing you quickly learn is leverless controllers have a big 'UP' button and this button is big enough and close enough to your attack buttons that instead of hitting the UP button with your movement fingers like you are used to, you can actually use an attack finger to do it and you can get some of the best 'close' to the ground jumps you have ever hoped for. This instant air movement is why some folks swear by leverless and I am happy I started working it out as soon as I did. Spectre, my main in DNF Duel has a lot of attacks that require to instant air moves and with this Flatbox I was getting so much more consistently compared to my old sticks. Dashing is also easier even through I was used to rapid dashing with a stick thanks to playing King and Claudio (whom have tons of instant dashing attacks) and within a couple play tests with the Flatbox I was able to consistently pull off Spectre's hardest combo trials (trials number 7 and 8 respectively which requires lots of instant air and dash cancelling to pull off). I was stoked and even I can not believe how fast I've picked it up.

This is a Spectre Sponsored blog.

However funny enough, some of her easier combos take a bit more effort but I eventually got those down as well. I still get hand cramps so I try not to push these practice sessions for too long but enough that I am getting comfortable with it. The size of the Flatbox is surprisingly not an issue and the other main issue I had was I need a box to set my feet on when I am practicing so my feet ain't hovering off the ground. The Flatbox is also sitting at the end of my knees where its most level with my hands and where I can rest my wrists so I do not need to hover like I thought I needed too.  My biggest issue so far is actually concerned the Flatbox itself. For some strange reason the Left movement button got unstuck really quickly and it kept popping out after a couple of presses, exposing the switch below it. I have placed it back in but after a couple presses it comes out again. Eventually I replaced it with one of the replacement buttons they provided and it has stuck better but hopefully that won't be an ongoing issue. All in all, it has really started to work out for me.

We will be arriving at an impasse through, DNF Duel special moves can be done with traditional fireball, dragon punch motions but you can also use simple inputs as well so instead having to do a full down, down forward, forward and attack button for a fireball motion you can do forward and attack button to get the same results (with some small caveats) however the game we want to really learn leverless with requires the full motions and well, I haven't practice them as much so in the next blog we will see how that comes along now I have picked up UNI2 and really start Learning Leverless.

AV