Gravis Gamepad Pro alternatives \ VOGONS

Gravis Gamepad Pro alternatives

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First post, by Caesum

Caesum Offline

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Hello, I want to buy a gamepad for my Windows 98se rig to play some older games like TES Redguard or Tomb Raider IV with it. I have two questions though:

1. Do you know any alternatives to Gravis Gamepad Pro that would work? I live in Poland and I tried to look for this particular model, but it seems it is not available on any website with retro hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if it never shipped to Poland in the first place. The best I could find is Retro gamepad GRAVIS DESTROYER "Tilt" with USB cable, but it doesn't have all the PSX buttons Gamepad Pro has. If there are any people from the post soviet bloc countries I'd love to hear your opinions as I suppose we might have had similar products back in the day.

2. What the advantages and disadvantages between DA-15 and USB gamepads? I know that USB doesn't work in DOS games, but does it mean games running in DOS on Windows 98se wouldn't use it at all then? Are there any benefits from USB gamepads that DA-15 lack or is OS compatibility the only thing?

Reply 1 of 3, by Johnylyr

Posted on Today, 09:24

Johnylyr Offline

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Logitech F310 wired and F710 wireless. F710 has a hardware dinput/xinput toggle. Just turn it to dinput and win98 games should work fine. 8bitdo has some nice gamepads as well.

As far as dos games are concerned, I do not remember what happens when you run them through windows, but in pure dos, usb gamepads do not work. But the same can be true for many advanced late models gameport gamepads.

Reply 2 of 3, by dr_st

Posted on Today, 09:55

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Johnylyr wrote on Today, 09:24:

As far as dos games are concerned, I do not remember what happens when you run them through windows, but in pure dos, usb gamepads do not work. But the same can be true for many advanced late models gameport gamepads.

Including the Gravis Gamepad Pro. DOS games only 'natively' recognize up to 4 gamepad buttons. Anything fancy like the 10-button Gravis Gamepad Pro requires custom support in the game (or some generic driver). This particular pad has a compatibility switch in the back to make games recognize it as a standard pad, but then the buttons don't work.

Still, it might be a good pad for a mix of DOS and Windows gaming. You can frequently find them on eBay. The D-Pad sucks, IIRC. Not as bad as on the original Gravis Gamepad, but still. But then again, D-Pads almost always suck. I never could stand gamepads for anything other than analog stick precision (which, of course, does not apply to a gamepad such as this that doesn't have analog controls).

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Reply 3 of 3, by Shponglefan

Posted on 54 minutes ago

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dr_st wrote on Today, 09:55:

Including the Gravis Gamepad Pro. DOS games only 'natively' recognize up to 4 gamepad buttons. Anything fancy like the 10-button Gravis Gamepad Pro requires custom support in the game (or some generic driver). This particular pad has a compatibility switch in the back to make games recognize it as a standard pad, but then the buttons don't work.

This is one reason I used the Suncom controllers (gamepad and joystick) back in the day. They had keyboard passthrough connectors so you could map keyboard buttons to them.

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