A sad realisation came upon me this afternoon: I don’t use joysticks anymore. I have one somewhere, but I don’t think it’s been plugged into a PC for about five years. On my consoles and PC there are gamepads galore, but the grand stick of old is gone. Some people still think themselves connoisseurs of the rubberised grip, however. One such person is Gasbandit, who has been writing about joysticks past and present. He makes a few suggestions.
Maybe if there were some decent, inexpensive yet sturdy and dependable joysticks to play with that weren’t concerned about finding places to mount 58 impossible-to-program buttons somewhere on the surface of the stick, devs might actually see a market for some good flight sims again.
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Mr Bandit. You’ll be blue and dead a long time before joysticks cause a resurgence in accessible flight sims.
Anyway, the best joystick is clearly this bastard:
Yeah.
No way! The Quickshot Maverick was always the winner for me :)
I do miss the Amiga days.
I quite liked that bastard, if only for its indestructibility, but its action was a bit over-stiff for my liking. The Powerplay Cruiser – in its horrifically coloured edition (Pink/Green/Yellow) – was my personal favourite, due to its similar button set up to your fucker, plus the ability to change between 3 different joystick stiffness.
Also liked the Bug, as Amiga Power told me to. I could never get it working right on Sensible Soccer – its diagnols were too uncertain on any model I played.
We should do a group entry on this one, I think.
KG
The Quickshot 2 was always my favourite. I never managed to break it, despite spending at least 50 hours waggling it frantically playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon.
I had that bastard in a shiny transparent blue casing with some extra buttons that were totally useless. I think there was a cheat button that would do auto-fire? Anyway, that thing withstood years and years of Speedball 2 and Sensible Soccer with nary a complaint. It was godlike.
Old article I know and maybe you’ll never see this BUT…
That was a fantastic joystick and as Kieron mentioned, sodding indestrubtible. However I also have fond memories of my Speedking and from my happy speccy days, the Kempston.
Speedking
http://archive.gamespy.com/hardware/june02/sticks1/2.jpg
Kempston
http://www.magicmess.co.uk/cb_images/instr%20joystick%201.jpg
*weeps rose tinted tears*
Really old article… but the Zipstick was the f’n daddy.