I’m getting old. There, I said it. This week I built a ‘new’ MS-DOS machine from parts I had laying around, and so I started installing some DOS games on it. One of those games was Descent, because I used to be really good at that game… Well, not anymore so it seems..
I really have no idea how I pulled it off, but my entire MS-DOS gaming era I played games without a mouse or joystick. I was the keyboard kid. It was Windows 95 that forced me to use a mouse.
Its not long before I figure out the controls of my spaceship in Descent: arrows for direction, ‘a’ and ‘z’ for accelerate and reverse and ‘q’ and ‘e’ for rotating around my z-axis. Oh, wait, I also have to fire my primary and secondary gun. I don’t have enough fingers! How did I manage to play it like this back in the day?
In frustration I close the game and go looking for a joystick in my retro collection. I find a sealed Gravis PC Pro Joystick. Lets see if that’s any better.