[comp.sys.amiga.games] Falcon, Gravis MouseStick

carloss@bass.bu.edu (Carlos Smith) (02/07/91)

In article <1991Feb4.135712.14658@cbnewsc.att.com> opus@cbnewsc.att.com (robin.g.kim) writes:

>Has anyone tried playing Falcon using the Gravis MouseStick?  Was it much
>better?  Do you need a special version of Falcon, or does it use the
>"Mouse 2" control setting?
>
>						Robin Kim
>						att!ihlpe!opus

A friend and I both got MouseSticks for Falcon, and we love it. I don't play
without it anymore. You play with the "Mouse 2" setting, but you need to
make sure you have a current update of Falcon or the mission disks. The
earlier versions had a bug in the "Mouse 2" mode. In fact,"Operation
Firefight" had a bug in mouse 2 mode when it first came out, though 
Spectrum Holobyte is shipping a fixed version now (the bug was that the
stick would not re-center properly. You had to keep hitting the "right
mouse button" to recenter the stick. Tough when you are landing...).

This stick gives you very nice control of bank and pitch angles, with
the advantages of a mouse (analog control and very quick motion to extreme
stick positions - no ramping as with a digital stick) and of a joystick
(auto-centering). Spectrum Holobyte really seems to have tried to make
the game run well with the Mousestick.

Of course, it is very expensive. It is rugged, and it is programmable,
which is supposed to allow you to use it on almost any game that uses
a mouse, but in fact I have not been able to get it to work well with
any other game. I have not gotten it to work on Their Finest Hour (though
a trackball works great!) nor F16 Combat Pilot. There may be settings that
would work, but there are hundreds of combinations. However, it does have
a digital joystick mode, so you can run the game as with a normal joystick.

All in all, I love it, but then again, I got it for $75 as a special offer
with Spectrum Holobyte.

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Carlos Smith