They used to have these Sidewinders for sale at my local BJs and Costco for $25 throughout the 90s and 2000s. Joysticks kind of just gradually disappeared in the time since. Used to love playing on it for Flight Simulator 98 and Duke Nukem as a kid. Didn't occur to me until now but when did these actually fall out of fashion? I don't think I've seen one for darn near 20 years. Would any modern PC game be more enjoyable played on a joystick?
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We got tired of calibrating the damned things…
You can get a joystick and play games on it today, if you wanted to.
When we could start using console controllers easily.
I feel like flight/space sim games used to be a lot more popular back in the 90s and 2000s. Those kind of games really lend themselves to a joystick.
Had that same exact one. Thing was comfortable and beefy too!
they’re called flight sticks now. And they have never stopped being manufactured. I suspect I’m not the only comment suggesting you simply aren’t looking?
never heard of DCS? Micro flight sim? warthunder? etc.
all these games can be played via joystick and i know many people who do so
also, you can still buy these joysticks for like 20 bucks on amazon
Loved my Sidewinder 3D. Apart from being able to jaw, which was very handy
in Descent 3D, the builtquality was also very good. Got a joystick recently to
play DCS, and for Overload ( a Descent 3D clone :P) but I don’t use it that often.
OP (and a lot of other folks, apparently) doesn’t know what a HOTAS is. Joysticks didn’t go anywhere, you just don’t play flight sims.
what ? anyone who plays flight sim will have one
Thrustmaster, Logitech and CH Products are still selling the same basic ~~crap~~ joysticks that they’ve been making since the late 90’s early 2000’s. Joysticks are still used for space and flight sims, DCS is pretty popular and MSFS 2000 with it’s release during a lot of people being stuck at home during the pandemic led to a bit of a seller’s market for flight sim gear which has now cooled a bit. VKB and Virpil pretty much lead the more boutique flight sim market now, with a company called Winwing joining more recently, stealing other companies designs (as far as I am concerned) as well as providing absolute ~~Asus~~ shit level customer service. Moza, which was primarily in the much more popular driving sim market, has also recently entered the joystick space and FFB is even coming back now. While some of us still prefer the HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) controls, HOSAS (Hands on Stick and Stick) has become popular for space sims as it lends itself to 6 DoF (Degrees of Freedom) maneuvering.
They never really went away, the market has just changed.
Ï have this one and it still works <3
https://preview.redd.it/xu1p49pmdidf1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17a9bcbbae64917a1d1a99e38aa090e664b1d25d
Fighter Ace 3.5 Glory days of Flight Sticks.
Circa 1997- 2013
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Ace_(video_game_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Ace_(video_game_series))
You can YT dogfights/ KOTS and Canyon Run events/ and Territorial Combat videos as well as FFA arena’s.
I used to have that exact joystick. It wasn’t really all that though. I ended up giving it away to a friend.
I remember in those days I used to hate gaming with a keyboard and mouse, so I would always try to do it with a gamepad. At PC gamepads back then sucked because that was before X input. So you had to do a lot of keyboard to gamepad mapping and it was pretty bad. I had a 3Dfx brand gamepad, wish I kept it but some games would work okay with it and some it just wasn’t really doable at all and it was nothing like a gamepad on the console where the dual analogs worked correctly because that was the real issue with game pads on PC back then, the analog sticks didn’t function like they do today. As far as joysticks go, people mostly use them for flight simulators.
I have a HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) that I use for games like Elite Dangerous. Other than that I hardly ever use it.
Hey I had one of those in the late 90s 🙂 trying to recall the game I used it on. I actually think it was Carmageddon. lol my pops set that up for us, you know when running people/animals over for points was parenting. I remember the football stadium level, most points you could get, football players and cheerleaders.
Oh shit. I’m going down memory lane and smiling to myself.
That’s it boys, think I got the old man phase or staring off into space reminiscing.
They haven’t fallen out at all and it’s actually the opposite in that the variety available for purchase is far greater than it has ever been. You can find cheap sticks for under $50 or highly expensive ones for hundreds with some being close to a thousand. You can easily do a search online to find all of them if you’re interested.
As someone who really enjoys flight sims and has been playing them for over 20 years I can tell you right now is the golden age of it. Many different games and devices you play on including VR experiences that blow anything else out of the water.
I have a pair of VKB Gladiators, one for each hand to play space sims with.
I’ve recently gotten into them, and learned that we are in an age with many good options for sticks.
I still use my Force Feedback 2 in MSFS. However, it’s flat out awesome with force feedback in Freespace 2!
There’s tons of modern high quality flight sticks on the market and plenty of games to use them in
I don’t remember these ever being popular, unless you were playing flight sims. I was gaming on PC from the mid 90s and it was all keyboard and mouse for everything outside of flight sims and racing games.
I still have incredibly fond memories playing Star Wars rogue squadron 3D on pc with a high end joy stick, I have tried so hard to replicate that but I have yet to find a joystick similar to the one my dad got all those years ago
When the Xbox USB controller was created
Flightsims are increasingly popular these days some like msfs 2024, dcs and BMS all have dedicated flight sticks for different aircraft. Hotas setups are especially popular with military SIM gamers.
I’d say when Xbox and the Xbox 360 hit the scene. That was the first major blurring of the lines between PC games and console games.
Once devs started making games for consoles and PC in mind controllers kind of because the go to.
Games moved to gamepads and vehicle Sims added more complex controllers like HOTAS. Joysticks are still used, but they’re usually integrated with other hardware on a smaller scale.
The biggest change for joysticks was in the late 2000s when USB became standard. Once devices had a unified way to connect to everything, controllers stopped being platform specific. Meaning, you could use your wonderful Xbox controller with your PC. This reduced the need to use PC-only peripherals, especially since some game devs left the Xbox control schemes in their PC ports, meaning you didn’t have to do controller configuration for them.
i assume when mouse and keyboard became an accepted control scheme.
so which game pioneered mouse look?
My high school friends dad had a monster joystick that was absolutely amazing for whichever Mechwarrior game it was he had.
I have one for space/flight games.
The sidewinder joysticks were great with Motocross Madness. I dabbled in a bit of IL-2 Sturmovik as well but otherwise never really got into flight sims.
In the late 90s, pc gaming still had its own identity. After Xbox in the early 2000s, gaming went mainstream, and PC games had to be dumbed down so publishers could milk the console crowd.
The real question is why no amazing First person mech games that can utilize dual joysticks for the ultimate gundam/zoid/mecha of your choice fantasy.
I believe it was around the early 2000’s when I saw that most stores stopped carrying them and they seemed to only appear in super specialized places. Like the flight sim places. I used them throughout the 90s and saw them in every store back then
There was a time when it was?
I still own a Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 which I picked up for $5 at a thrift store. Has USB and is still supported in Windows 11!
Did it? Or is it just that not many play flight or space simulators? Cause I see gamers use joysticks all the time (when the game calls for it).
Last time I used one daily was during my Elite Dangerous days. Will probably use one again when I finally get around to fully dedicate myself to Star Citizen (busy with competitive gaming).
Good dualstick.controllers have rendered them pretty niche, there are lots of sticks on the market still but they are mostly for flight sim fans.
I still rock this stick… lol
Best joystick ever made
2010s for some reason everyone just stop caring about anything but first and third person shooters and mmoRPGs and tycoon games . So RTS , flight sims and space sims. Everything else kinda just went away
Depends on what you play. If you ain’t playing flight sims then there’s no point to the joystick. If you are playing flight sims then it’s still viable.
My VKB Gladiator II begs to differ! I little touch of dampening grease and that thing feels like a million bucks for less than two hundred.
I still have that in a box of old parts and cables. Need to see if it works
There’s not enough space and flight sims anymore. If there’s a resurgence you’ll probably see these come back. I personally have a Logitech X56
Not many good flying games other than ms flight sim
They were never 25$.
Sidewinder Precision 2s were like 125$+ the force feedback editions were even more.
I still have one of these actually that i had bought new back then in a radio shack.
Joysticks are still normal for Flight and Space sims , many people use them in either Dual joystick or HOTAS configs for games like Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen.
I use Dual joysticks with Racing peddles for Elite Dangerous , A pair of [Thrustmaster’s](https://www.thrustmaster.com/en-gb/products/sol-r-2-hosas-space-sim-duo/) Configured left/right with peddles for Thrust forward and reverse , Left stick for up down left right thrusters , buttons for core needs and the right stick for yaw left right bull back and push down etc.
The main thing that’s changed is the industry now has much better sticks around if your really into it but they cost alot , and most are serviceable.
[https://virpil.com/](https://virpil.com/) | [https://www.vkbcontrollers.com/](https://www.vkbcontrollers.com/) | [https://www.thrustmaster.com/](https://www.thrustmaster.com/)