Diving Into Fighting Games

So I had just rewatched the amazing quick look on Mortal Kombat X and it really got me thinking into finally making the dive into fighting games as a whole. I have always wanted to but never really had that push to do it. With Street Fighter 5 now out and hopefully getting better with more patches I want to focus on that and the aforementioned Mortal Kombat X. I just have two main questions on this.

1. I would like to play both of these games on my PC. With that, is there any problems with these games with those versions of it. I had heard that there was a it of a mess with Mortal Kombat but I had hoped by now it has been fixed.

2. I am not quite sure what fighting sticks are quality ones nowadays. I am looking for a proper premium one that has a good quality to it. Price is not o much an issue as long as we are not going too crazy. My last standard that I would need is that I need the stick to be universally recognized between all platforms including PS4 and xbox 360 and PC as well as at least these 2 games and any other major ones.

I do really want to give this a good shot and I know I will stick with it if I have the proper information to lead me down a good path,

Do not buy MK on PC. They have basically completely stopped supporting that platform, as it has not received and has no plans of receiving the massive upgrades that came along with the MKXL release this year. As far as joysticks go, I'm a big fan of the MadCatz stuff so either the TE2+ or TES+ would serve you well, but they're on the high end cost-wise. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B018AW405K

Of course sticks are in no way a necessity so if you're more familiar with pad, you could stick with that.

I hate to be that dude, but you should really start with Street Fighter if you want to have a good understanding on fighting game fundamentals. For example, MK uses a dedicated button for blocking and that can get you into some pretty weird habits later if you try and branch out. Sure, a fair number of other games use the dedicated block button, but I find most of the best ones like Street Fighter and Killer Instinct have back to block.

Oh I must have somehow glossed over the fact that you need a stick that also works on 360? That's real tough because as @l1ghtn1n said, your "best" option at that point is to buy a 360 stick and a Brook Converter which is unofficial hardware that could end up getting patched out of any PS4 firmware update at any point in the future. I'm curious to know what games you would be buying it for, as PC and PS4 will have you covered for the games with the most active communities.

So I actually don't mind starting out more with street fighter . It was more of just how MK caught my eye a bit. So really All I really need is a stick to work with both PC and PS4 while being in high end quality. Also, I will probably pick up MKXL for PS4 which is ok with me. But what about street fighter 5. Is there a preferable version? Higher popularity rate between PC and PS4. I know they have that cross play but I have also heard thats not 100 percent working.

@starvinggamer: I was thinking of going back to a previous Street Fighter 4 version as I know they have some better tutorials in there I think. But at this point I can see how the better option at this point is to just go forward with the most recent releases.

@spence_5060: Nah, there are basically no tutorials in SFIV. If you want a fighting game with good tutorials I would suggest either KI or Skullgirls.

EDIT: And yeah, one of the newer Madcatz sticks will probably be your best bet as they're natively Dinput (PS4) but also have a PC driver to translate them to Xinput which is more widely supported on PC.

@spence_5060: There are actually precious few quality tutorials in any fighting game; pretty much just Virtua Fighter, Skullgirls, and Killer Instinct have had the only half-decent ones. On top of that, even if you do start with one of those 3, it still would be worth your while to look up fighting game fundamentals tutorials on youtube. I recommend looking up Street Fighter fundamentals tutorials. They might use SF4 or SF5 in the video but if you learn one of the SF games you kinda learn how to play all of them. Thing about fighting games is that at first you struggle to really get a handle on figuring out how to control your character exactly how you want. At lower mid tier of play you transition into not focusing on you control your character and your opponent controlling theirs, but rather you controlling their character. You'll analyse their patterns and figure out how to provoke them to do what you want them to.

For a stick, unless you specifically want to play a certain game on 360 I'd just go with a PS4 stick for convenience. Potentially in the future you could get a very easy mod done to make it work with PC, PS3, PS4, 360 and XBone. Also a stick is a real investment and it is very much worth it to invest into the $150-200 range. I spent like $60 on my first stick and went back to my gamepad. More importantly, if you've grown up using a controller all your life you'd probably be better off sticking with a good controller, like a PS1 controller, a Sega Saturn controller, or one of the newer fight pads. Starting from scratch on stick (or hitbox) takes months to years to get the hang of.

Finally, I would highly recommend looking around on the internet, on shoryuken.com, on facebook, or just googling, for whatever fighting game community you have in your community. Find out what they play, you can even try out playing on a tick and see if you like it. At all levels fighting games are a million times more fun and rewarding with other real people, and early on especially if all you do is play randoms online it'll be very frustrating and not very fun.

if you're keen on getting MKX on PS4, I'd hold off on buying a stick. Pad/Controller is a really common way to play that game and it would keep you from dropping $150-$230 bucks on a nice fight stick until you know this is a kind of game you really enjoy.

That said, I do think fight sticks make Street Fighter a lot more fun to play and my new TE2+ has been great so far.