So I was wondering, for those of you who bought the Battle Edition of the game, what is you impression of the arcade stick?

Personally, I was on the fence about keeping mine, I decided too, and while I haven't had the chance to test it out yet, my first impression after taking it out of the package is that it as solid if not better than the MK9 Tournament stick.

The stick is housed in a much shorter unit, similar to the Mad Catz TE stick (actually its probably slightly shorter). The entiere bottom has a rubber pad vs the Mad catz stick which only has 4 small nubs on the corner.The stick itself actually uses an octagonal restrictor plate/gate, compared to the circle gate that Happ & MK have always used. The buttons are actually flat, not convex or concave. They're more springy and clicky than any other buttons I've seen on an arcade stick. There are also quick access screws on the topplate for modding. I haven't opened it up though. The stick also appears to feature LED lights that can be turned on.

Overall I think the build quality is much better than the Mad Catz TE stick, just some of the features seem a little odd. If I had to mod the stick (which i might do at some point in the future), I'd probably change out the octagonal gate, and maybe swap in some cherry switches for the buttons. Right now they just seem really hard.