A $300 tournament edition fightstick on the gray market? Screw that. Reader Rotundo made one for himself and another for his friends out of $40 in spare parts and two shoeboxes. Oh, and one's wireless.
He picked up a couple of Happ joysticks and 14 buttons for $35, then set about taking apart some Xbox controllers to wire the sucker up. Most people make their homebrew sticks out of wood, but Rotundo had neither "spare wood" nor "any decent tools to cut said wood." Looking around, he settled on two Nike shoeboxes, which he says can take a beating.
The blue-black box at left is his "Tournament Edition,' since it's wireless. The gold edition at right, "unlike the official Mad Catz sticks, has a way to hold the cord, since it's well ... a shoebox." Here you can see the innards.
Kudos to Rotundo. This is just the kind of Depression-era improvised engineering that'll help get us through the hard times.