Ragnarök-Hard Joystick

How real a difference is there between arcade joysticks?

School of Ragnarok is a convoluted fighting game with a custom cabinet, and this brushed metal globule is what it offers to your left hand.

Set in the fake-leather controltop, this stick is rock-hard. It’s a steel ball on a short steel rod. As you hit it side to side against its thick steel flange, there’s absolutely no give in the mechanism whatsoever. Push it and it asserts its boundaries so suddenly it seems to be offended.

It’s a nasty and abrupt tactile experience that somehow jars into your bones and stays there, like biting down on a marble.

Nice fake leather, though.