Gravis PC Gamepad

This is of course a classic gamepad nearly synonymous with dos gameplay but as a new product the buttons are a bit mushy and unresponsive and the Dpad is difficult to be precise with. I love mine but if you want an actually good DOS gamepad look elsewhere.

Item received as expected, new in box!

I've used this gamepad for Descent ever since a friend of mine made me aware of it. The blue and yellow buttons work great for forward and back and the red and green buttons are great for fire one and two. I'm realy happy to find one that works. It also works pretty good under X-Wing and TIE fighter. If you want a joystick with tons of buttons and axis you'll need to look else where but for a simple one axis, four button pad it's great!

☆☆☆☆☆'s All around!!

Many of the early Gravis PC Gamepads were actually manufactured in Canada by Gravis before sourcing product West of Hawaii became more popular for American manufacturers than working with domestic manufacturers of electronics. In the early nineties - just as PC gaming on the x86 platforms was catching up to the platform gaming systems - Gravis set the standard for a well-engineered, rugged, and ergonomically correct pad that gave you just a few more options (depending on how you use the Gamepad) than the NES controller. And interestingly enough, the feel of the controller is akin to the NES system - the de facto standard for gaming around the time the product was originally introduced.The last one that I purchased actually game with the original disk, a plastic bag package, instructions, and a blue 3.5 inch floppy disk containing Gravis Utilities. It appeared to have been unused. Overall, however, even if you don't get a complete version, these are relatively easy to clean and/or fix, and can be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled in just a few minutes. The original version fit into a PC game port - similar or identical to many serial ports - but you could easily (with some tinkering or creative sourcing) convert this item to a USB (or even wireless USB) device. There are adapters for USB on Amazon - and certainly you should consider one if this is going to be anything other than a vintage computing showpiece.As for personal experience - my brother and I were pretty hardcore gamers back in the day. My original Gravispad (purchased in 1995 +/- a year) was manufactured in Canada as well, and it lasted more than ten years before I sold it at a yard-sale. Big mistake - these are a great piece to make those of us who are more familiar with older controllers play modern PC games with comfort and ease, utilizing the keyboard as necessary. The pad also came with a little cone-shaped screw-in joystick that enabled the directional pad to function as a joystick. While many units floating around probably don't have one, I enjoyed having this - particularly for games such as PacMan.Overall a very dependable, simple, and clean little device that was well-engineered and designed in North America - and in many cases manufactured in Canada. They stand the test of time in functionality as well as form factor, and you would be hard pressed to find a controller that had such a measurable impact on the transition of PC gaming from niche-nerd-pasttime to the mainstream. From both a collector's point of view - and a gamer of either the modern or vintage sort - this is a great product. Like a "clicky" mechanical keyboard - that's seeing now its resurgence as a popular PC accessory - we may see the Gravispad come back, reigniting the interest in the quality of PC components from the early days.

I've seen the reviews for this Gamepad and I had to put my two cents in. I bought my Gamepad back in 1996 and it's been working fine since then. Only recently has it started giving me problems after I slid a desk over the cord, fraying the cable. So apparently, as long as you keep it out from under the furniture, you'd be okay.It's a simple gamepad, but it's worked for every game that I've used it so far. Unfortunately, it doesn't have USB support, but most of the games that I like to play are older games.Anyway, buy this pad and it'll last you forever.

After the 1 review below I just had to create my own !!I had one of these for almost 10 years and it worked fine for all the games that I tried it on.Here's a rundown of the Pluses:-------------------------------- It was superbly compatible with all DOS games at the time and maintained compatibility all the way up to Win98-SE. IF your PC still has a Joystick port (which I doubt) I bet It'll work fine (drivers are included in Win2000/XP).- Aside from a top-brand console pad (e.g. Nintendo), it's the best D-pad I've played with (IMHO the top 3 are SNES pad, original NES pad and the PS's Dualshock / Dualshock 2 D-pad). It could actually be used for Fighting games (i.e. Street Fighter2, etc.) even though it only has 4 buttons. Anyone who has played Fighting games will know that the D-pad can be MUCH more crucial than not being able to use the weakest attack of your character.- Also, it has been one of my longest-lasting gaming controllers, withstanding years of abuse with the D-pad and buttons still working fine.- At this point, the price. You can probably grab it for next to nothing. I've even seen it at flea-markets.Now the Cons:-------------- OOOLLLLLDDD technology !!! (obviously). This thing came out way back when a PC could handle 2 joysticks with 2 buttons each, so the fact that this pad was using 4 buttons was a BIG deal (by taking over the "possible" 2nd joystick's buttons). As mentioned above it requires a 15-pin Joystick port which almost no existing Desktop has let alone any laptop that I've seen since 1997!- Needless to say, No USB support.- Lack of buttons (only 4).Final comment:--------------This WAS an awesome pad and if you find it and have the required joystick port could probably provide a pretty decent gaming experience for only a few cents. It was one of the first REAL gamepads for the PC so you'd get a part of gaming history !!I only stopped using it because I was able to connect my old SNES pad directly to the PC (only ~7 Diodes) and now I have adapters for the N64 pad (only good for N64 emulation really), PS1/PS2 (great for general gaming) and will (probably) end up buying Microsoft's PC hookup for the X360's wireless controllers (not for fighting games though).BTW, I recently TRIED buying a USB PC controller (PS2 Dualshock2 knock-off) and STILL the BIG headache for these companies is getting the D-Pad juuuussst right... awesome how Gravis had it down in 1991 !HTH

No Start and Select, no L and R's. Just 4 buttons and a D-pad. And what's that little switch? Oh, it flips it so you can use it upside down (makes the color buttons be directions) I had one of these for a while and I hated it. Nice for two button NES game emulation, but not SNES or anything else. Get a Lik-Sang adapter and use your old Playstation 1 or 2 pads instead. Get Joy2Key and you can do keyboard and mouse mapping like a Saitek pad.