Cheap Logitech Wingman Gamepad Extreme (Electronics) (Windows 95, Windows 98) Price

Even at the very end of its wire, there is thoughtful design - you can use it in either the USB or sound card game port thanks to the included USB/gameport adapter. Software installation is as simple as it gets. After a quick reboot, I was prompted to plug in the gamepad. It was instantly recognized by Windows 98 and I was soon witnessing first-hand the fluid tilt mechanism behaving just like a joystick in the properties window. You simply hold the pad in your hands and tilt it left, right, forward or back to achieve analog movement along the X and Y axis. In this mode, the gamepad's D-pad works like an 8 position "hat" switch - very useful in flight (and some driving) sims. If you prefer it to act like a regular digital gamepad, you simply deactivate it by pressing the "sensor" button. A little top-mounted light turns from green to red and the tilt mechanism is off - giving you accurate and quick digital X/Y axis control with the D-pad.

This tilt mechanism is more than mere novelty. It feels like you're operating an invisible joystick - and it's extremely easy and intuitive to use in driving and flight simulations! When you're flying a plane and you want to pull up, what's more natural than tilting your gamepad's nose up? You get the feeling that you're holding a model of your plane in your hands and that it obeys and copies every move you make with it. Driving is no different - you feel like you're holding a free-floating steering wheel in your hands. If you want, you can assign gas to the "nose down" and brake to the "nose up" movement or, to either of its TEN buttons (including two triggers). The included software allows you to configure button controls for any of your installed games - including the abilty to "map" keyboard commands (or strings of keyboard commands) to each of the 10 buttons and D-pad. Once saved, your game "profile" will automatically load onto the gamepad when you launch the specific game it's set for. This is something that other game controller manufacturers (Microsoft, for one) can't do - they force you to first open their profile software and manually choose which game you're about to play to load the profile BEFORE you start that particular game. With Logitech's software, it's a no-brainer. No profiles to manually load or unload.

The controller is exceptionally light (much lighter and more streamlined than the Gravis Xterminator it replaced in my home) and very comfortable to hold. All buttons are within easy reach of my thumbs (with my average-to-small sized hands) and the triggers underneath are naturally where my index fingers would want them. Some review sites out there say it took them a while to get used to the tilt feature and gave it lower marks for that reason - but even my two kids (11 and 7 years old) got the hang of driving Need for Speed III with this thing almost instantly. When I showed them how to deactivate the tilt so they could use it as a regular gamepad, they immediately wanted the tilt re-engaged - it's that much more fun! Banking and moving the controller to get your game character (or car or plane) to move is not only natural (ever watch someone using a regular controller and see them lean into a turn?) but adds that much more of an immersive quality to any game. You can even switch the tilt feature on and off in the middle of game play! It really feels like you're the one doing the controlling now - not D-pad or a joystick.

I highly recommend this gamepad to anyone who plays a variety of game styles on their PC. While a dedicated joystick might give you a couple more options (like analog rudder and throttle controls), this thing's G-Force Tilt mechanism will fly just fine. While a steering wheel and pedal set might duplicate the driving experience better, tilting your way through turns with this pad is surely the next best thing. And when it comes to sports and action games where quick, digital-quality input is required to survive, all you have to do is push the "sensor" button to deactivate the tilt behavior and you've got yourself a high-quality digital gamepad with 10 programmable, easy-to-reach buttons. The $40 I paid for it was money well spent. To make the deal even sweeter, I found it bundled with a full version of Tony Hawk 2 - easily worth almost $40 by itself! My kids now have a gamepad for their games and I (thanks to the tilt feature) have a built-in, invisible joystick with plenty of buttons plus a hat switch for my games : )