While I also agree on that, and I've been told quite a while ago that it was not possible, at least you should try to make your case more "appealing".

There are rare MS-DOS games that were programmed to have specific support for 6-button controller/gamepad. That means that no special drivers or gimmicks were required. Just the supported game and an MS-DOS 6-button controller.

Such controllers were hard to find and I personally bought 2 of them at the time (the buttons of the 1st one wore out after too long gaming sessions). I know, shame on me... 😊

For any disbelievers, just check the respective game manual (if you happen to own it) or info on Mobygames:

Super Street Fighter II Turbo
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/super-stree … eCoverId,68444/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/super-stree … eCoverId,68448/

Striker 96
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/striker-96

While Mobygames doesn't mention anything about the 6 button support for Striker 96, I still have the manual and I'll post a picture of the page with that info.

I know there's at least a third game but sadly I can't remember it's name at the moment. 😜

So, other than "use the button mapper" reply there's really no solution at the moment.

To the devs:

If that happens to change and should the developers choose to support it - as Dosbox is indeed a DOS game emulator (without breaking Dosbox compatibility, of course), count me in for testing! 😎

Just to be clear about it, if that will ever be supported it's only gonna work for those games. All other games won't be able to make use of that.

On specific situations (which are not too complicated), this should already be possible, although earlier knowledge of the way stuff was made to work would help.

An example follows. Interestingly, you're not alone, njaydg: I also tested a 6-button gamepad with SSF2T (well the demo) long ago.

A short background: Originally, gameports were made to accept up to four buttons and four axes. As an example of that, a pair of two-button joysticks could be used by two players.

For 6-button gamepad support in SSF2T, the following mappings were basically done:
- The gamepad's axes acted as the first joystick's axes.
- Four of the gamepad's buttons were used as both joysticks' buttons.
- A fifth button press simulated a push of the second joystick to the left.
- A sixth button press simulated a push of the second joystick to the top (i.e. further than the player).

Therefore, if one wants to use a USB gamepad with 6 buttons or more within DOSBox in that fashion, you should basically follow these steps:
- Start DOSBox and then load the keyboard/joystick mapper.
- Now pay attention to the entries below "Axis 1/2" and "Axis 3/4".
Warning: You do not want to fiddle with anything below the title "Hat/D-pad". It can make SSF2T get stuck.
- Map virtual buttons 1,2,3,4 (as shown in the DOSBox mapper configuration) to four physical buttons of your gamepad.
- Map the D-Pad to the "X-", "X+", "Y-" and "Y+" directions as appearing below "Axis 1/2". You basically map 4 directions to 4 directions the intuitive way.
- Map "X-" as shown below "Axis 3/4" to a fifth physical button.
- Map "Y-" as shown below "Axis 3/4" to a sixth physical button.
- Click on "Save" to save the new mappings and "Exit" to get back to where you've originally been.

Well, this is how things can work, at least for this specific game.

You could also use a program like joytokey to map your entire joystick to keyboard keys, that's how I play Mortal Kombat Trilogy, that supports only 4 joystick buttons.