Did anyone ever actually use these strange joysticks?

[oneselfSelf]

I was suddenly reminded about these joysticks meant for computers that were "approved" by Romero himself. Did anyone ever actually use these? If so what were they like? They look weirdly uncomfortable.

 

[Stupid Bunny]

I always thought joysticks were terrible for anything that wasn't a flight sim, but maybe that was just me.  Still had to get used to them with the old Atari anyway.

 

Anyway no I've never used or actually heard about these, interesting fun stuff (especially that these are evidently at least a couple years apart from one another, based on what Romero is credited for)

[Gifty]

"I'm John Romero and this is my favorite joystick on the citadel"

Edited May 7 by Gifty

[vanilla_d00m]

Thats what my cousin had when he played DOOM on his old PC.  I remember holding it down in game and it would move forward, press the button on top and it would fire.  Thats the first time i played it.  Then SNES, N64, then PSX.

 

Maybe it wasnt the exact one in this picture, but it was a joystick like that he used for the game.

Edited May 7 by vanilla_d00m

[Chris Hansen]

Logitech Wingman was awesome. My friend had one and we loved playing X-Wing or Tie Fighter with it. Not Doom though. That was mainly keyboard and a little later mouse also.

 

edit: Just to clarify. My friend had the regular Wingman, not the Warrior model in the images. Can’t imagine it would beat a mouse and keyboard.

Edited May 7 by Chris Hansen

[Amaruψ]

2 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I always thought joysticks were terrible for anything that wasn't a flight sim, but maybe that was just me.  Still had to get used to them with the old Atari anyway.

 

 

LGR covered one of them. They're even bad for a flight sim, apparently.

[magicsofa]

"A lethal combination of Premium Joystick and Optimized Controlball"

[RHhe82]

I used joysticks back in the day, for sure. 2D platformers on home computers of early 80s, and flight sims of early 90s. Namely: X-Wing and especially TIE Fighter.

 

Never with Doom, though.

[june gloom]

I have a friend who won't play Descent without one and I'm over here like an XBox controller will do the job just fine.

[RichardDS90]

1 hour ago, june gloom said:

I have a friend who won't play Descent without one and I'm over here like an XBox controller will do the job just fine.

To be fair, I can see exactly what he means, it's the same deal for me except in Descent's case, it needs to be a pretty advanced flight stick. But it's a blast once set up right.

[june gloom]

I mean, I do get it. Descent is a nightmare on keyboard. But it's not a flight sim. I've played it with a stick and it just doesn't work for me the way twin thumbsticks do. Though I suppose a twin flightstick would have the same effect (and arguably be closer to what's actually in the cockpit.)

[Sesamia]

I used a joystick to play that Star Wars pod racing game on PC and it was awesome.

[Faceman2000]

I used to use one for the space battles in Star Wars Battlefront II (2005). They were fine but I was still playing a space battle in SWBF2 so it wasn’t that much fun.

[Sinnesloeschen]

Only absolute psychopaths play Doom with a Joystick.

 

Also this was during the period when John Romero was slightly annoying (Rockstar dev, making me his B*tch and all that) so we most likely took his praise of this thing with a grain (Read: Bag) of salt.

[ludicrous_peridot]

Oh, since the topic of odd joysticks came up, I've been itching to ask about Windows 95 ports of Doom and Hexen.

 

I know that Hexen 95 shipped with a dll module for configuring Spacetec Spaceball, so very much curious if anyone has tested it with this controller to see how moving, looking around and flying feels different in the game. 

 

The dll also seems multipurpose (as in has two sets of resources, one mentioning Doom and the other Hexen), so another thing I'd ask if it would be possible to use it with Doom 95 too.

[Zerofuchs]

Nope, only ever used joysticks for flight sims.

Considering that Doom is fairly tolerable for a shooter on dual analogue thumbsticks, might be okay on Joystick. If you've got no Z axis for twist, then you could have two joysticks and assign triggers and HATs to actions. If you have a twist axis, then you've got everything you need to control Doomguy in one hand.

 

After seeing a dude playing through Doom 2 and multiple map packs using nothing but mouselook movement and no strafe, I know you can theoretically complete most commercial maps and a fair number of custom maps with nothing but a trackpad... if you're patient enough. Wouldn't try it single segment.

Edited May 8 by Zerofuchs

[Maximum Matt]

Joystick it down.

[ALilGrayBoi]

On 5/8/2024 at 6:25 AM, Zerofuchs said:

a dude playing through Doom 2 and multiple map packs using nothing but mouselook movement and no strafe

I applaud who ever that guy is because I played all of ultimate doom with the mouselook movement and it was a nightmare. Even worse so because I was using wadcmd on mobile and I could barley press the buttons 

[kalensar]

Yup! I remember using one for Descent Freespace back in the day, but not much else.

[RDETalus]

Yeah I played Doom II with joystick back then. Looking back it was stupid and inferior to the mouse, but that was the whole fad at the time and being able to "hold" a handgrip and pull a trigger was really cool. I don't recall strafing being possible. I'm not sure if mouselook was popularized yet at the time either.

Edited May 14 by RDETalus

[DoomGater]

On 5/7/2024 at 9:45 PM, june gloom said:

I have a friend who won't play Descent without one and I'm over here like an XBox controller will do the job just fine.

I spend YEARS to configure several joysticks correctly and comfortably, just to find outlater,
that you can play Descent much better with Key & Mouse using an expanded WASD-layout.
I'd prefer to play Doom 'keyboard only' over 'joystick doom'.

BTW: Afaik John  is lefthanded, how could he comfortably use these Joysticks?
 

Edited May 15 by DoomGater
added lefty info

[june gloom]

Give an Xbox controller a try. The dual thumbsticks allow for much smoother movement than KBM or a traditional joystick.

[DNSKILL5]

Romero’s involvement was nothing more than an advertising strategy since he was a name and face many gamers would recognize. At least back then, he used mouse and keyboard, left handed style. I would not be surprised if the only time he ever even held them was for the images in the advertisements. 

Edited May 16 by DNSKILL5