Recently I resigned from my job, hence now I am left with a sizeable amount of free time. One of the crazy ideas I’ve had was to re-play my old games back from the late 90s and early 2000’s. My current setup lacks a joystick, which although is NOT REQUIRED, but it is highly recommended to have one to play those. I mean, it would be really, really difficult to play flight sims with your mouse and keyboard, or space-combat shooters with your mouse and keyboard.
Plus, back during those days, games of those genres expect you to have a joystick, so the mouse/keyboard combo support is pathetic.
So, I went off to Sim Lim Square (aka SLS) and went hunting for one. I thought I would be in and out in 10 mins. Little was I to know how wrong I’d be!
I arrived, went to a “champalang” shop (local slang for a shop selling accessories and peripherals for PCs and other electronic gadgets, but does not sell actual PCs nor gadgets). I looked, but couldn’t find any joysticks. I did see some Xbox controllers though. Ok so I left that one, and went to another, and another and so on. None of them had any joysticks! I came away totally perplexed, because gaming companies like Logitech, Thrustmaster, CH Products, Saitek etc still make them, and the Flight Sim community is still alive and well (on the Internet at least).