{"id":269,"date":"2012-04-28T16:20:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T08:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foxtwo.org\/blog\/?p=269"},"modified":"2012-04-28T16:20:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T08:20:52","slug":"gaming-joysticks-are-becoming-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.foxtwo.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/gaming-joysticks-are-becoming-extinct\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaming Joysticks Are Becoming Extinct"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Recently I resigned from my job, hence now I am left with a sizeable amount of free time. One of the crazy ideas I’ve had was to re-play my old games back from the late 90s and early 2000’s. My current setup lacks a joystick, which although is NOT REQUIRED, but it is highly recommended to have one to play those. I mean, it would be really, really difficult to play flight sims with your mouse and keyboard, or space-combat shooters with your mouse and keyboard.<\/p>\n

Plus, back during those days, games of those genres expect\u00a0 <\/em>you to have a joystick, so the mouse\/keyboard combo support is pathetic.<\/p>\n

So, I went off to Sim Lim Square<\/a> (aka SLS) and went hunting for one. I thought I would be in and out in 10 mins. Little was I to know how wrong I’d be!<\/p>\n

I arrived, went to a “champalang” shop (local slang for a shop selling accessories and peripherals for PCs and other electronic gadgets, but does not sell actual PCs nor gadgets). I looked, but couldn’t find any joysticks. I did see some Xbox controllers though. Ok so I left that one, and went to another, and another and so on. None of them had any joysticks! I came away totally perplexed, because gaming companies like Logitech<\/a>, Thrustmaster<\/a>, CH Products, Saitek etc still make them, and the Flight Sim<\/a> community is still alive and well (on the Internet at least).<\/p>\n

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Feeling abit disappointed, I headed for my usual gaming shop, just to see what new games are available. I haven’t been there in a while, because I stopped buying retail games. I hated all the DRM protection that comes with disk-based installs, and now I prefer buying them online via Steam, Origin, Gamestop, Amazon etc. Download copies don’t have DRM and I can just play them without needing a “crack” to stop them checking for my disk before they would launch.<\/p>\n

Lo and behold! In that game shop, I saw a whole bunch of joysticks on the shelves! From full HOTAS<\/a> setups to mid-range all-in-one to simple joysticks! Nowadays I seldom play flight sims, so I decided a full HOTAS setup would be overkill. I’d just get a mid-range all-in-one kind with throttle and twist handle to simulate rudders plus throttle.<\/p>\n

I came away with a Thrustmaster T.Flight Stick X<\/a>, from Thrustmaster of course.<\/p>\n

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It costs a little bit more than I was prepared for, but still it was so hard to locate a joystick now that I practically didn’t have a choice. Not that I would have gotten anything else because Thrustmaster makes one of the better gaming products anyway, but it would be nice if I actually had a choice and then decided to get the Thrustmaster on my own, rather than to be limited by only having one shop in the whole building selling joysticks and I had to choose from that shop’s inventory.<\/p>\n

In any event, the joystick is plug and play – stick it in via USB, Windows auto-detects and loads in the correct driver (by Microsoft, not Thrustmaster), and it’s auto-calibrated with ZERO drift and a no deadzone! This is somewhat of a surprise as I remembered my older joysticks all had to be calibrated once in a while to compensate for drift (some joystick even have trim controls on them) and specify a deadzone so spikes in drifts didn’t jerk the game during play. Maybe joysticks now are fully digital and no longer analog like in the old days… Hmmm…<\/p>\n

I fired up Freespace 2, an old space-shooter which I had fond memories of, and went for a spin with the new joystick. I was impressed with the stick, but not with my performance. In the 12 or so years since I stopped playing these kind of games, I now totally SUCK at dogfights. If I were to go online to play flight sim dogfights, I would be blown out of the skies in no time flat. Running LOMAC, or Lock On: Modern Air Combat<\/a>, confirmed it. I overpulled most of the time, and even if I could get in behind the enemy, I just can’t seem to lay my gunsights on the enemy for a gun kill.<\/p>\n

Ah well I guess I will have to practice playing with a joystick again.<\/p>\n

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