Here's one of my walk-through articles on how to modify your Hori Wii Fighting Stick/EX2 that I originally wrote for Pineconeattack back on 03.07.2009. I hope this article will still be useful to those still modify and upgrading your fightsticks. I will keep it up here for archival purpose.
--Nathan
The Hori EX2 walk-through seems to be a huge success with the community but I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails on people wanting a walkthrough on two topics: How to add a Sanwa joystick in your Hori EX2 & how to mod the Hori Wii Fighting Stick. Well since I was in the need for a good joystick for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and I wanted a joystick that played better than the stock stick, well good news, I finally finished modding my Wii Fighting stick with Sanwa push buttons & an authentic Sanwa joystick. It wasn’t as difficult as I expected but it defiantly was time consuming to figure out what needed to be trimmed, but more on that later.
The Wii Fighting Stick and the Hori EX2 are practically the same stick so this walkthrough will cover both sticks and probably the PS3 Hori EX2 stick as well. The main difference between the Xbox 360 Hori EX2 and the Hori Wii Fighting Stick is the addition of buttons on the Wii stick. Additional buttons means a different PCB. The process to modify each stick is identical so do not let the different boards confuse you.
Please note that the PCB on the Hori EX2 & the Wii Fighting Stick is very sensitive and has a tendency to commit suicide and like most PCB: do not touch the board unless you’ve grounded yourself and not charged with static. Static kills boards. Also do not over heat the solder because it will splash on the board which may cause a short.
This mod is more difficult than the first Hori EX2 and you will need a Dremel tool or something equivalent that can cut through plastic because you will be doing a LOT of cutting & grinding to the Sanwa joystick mount to get it to fit inside the Hori EX2/Wii Fighting Stick. I will not be replacing the joystick art because I want my Wii Fighting Stick to keep with the Wii’s sterile aesthetics, ie: I was too lazy to care.
The only noticeable exterior changes I made was replacing the last two blue buttons with white ones because I loathe 8 button configuration but I refuse to just plug them up because you never know when you might need them for a game. With the end buttons white, I can easily ignore them during game play. I also had to use some photos from a previous project to fill in the missing photos that I forgot to take, so hopefully this will not confuse anyone.
WARNING:
Attempt at your own risk!
DO NOT ATTEMPT unless you have some technical skills and can follow instructions. This walkthrough is as simplified as I can make it so if none of my instructions makes any sense then please DO NOT ATTEMPT.
This project will void your warranty.
[Pineconeattack (Outdated References) will not take any responsibility if you kill your joystick.]
