A short background of my experience with gaming peripherals. I was first a major PC gamer before I really considered Consoles to be where I did most of my gaming. These days, they're about even and both had their bonuses. In that time, you could go to numerous stores across the country, probably still can, and you'd find peripherals up the wazoo for optional additions to your gaming on the PC.

As console gaming has continued, we've gone through a series of peripherals, but for any console, most people can readily identify the most common... For my last purchases in those rounds, they were:

The Logitech Driving Force Pro Steering Wheel


And the Street Fighter 4 Fightstick, Tournament Edition


Before that was at least 5 of my favored peripheral on the PC. The Joystick. Sure, there's at least one per console, but they're not really well backed up. You'd occasionally have an aviation game being released, but typically its seen being played with a controller, the Joystick nearly forgotten.

Unfortunately, my last Joystick was back on the original Xbox. I say unfortunately because it was just unfortunate that I haven't felt urged to buy one again since then. Well... At least more reasonably priced. That joystick, or should I say Joysticks, was this:

Steel Battalion:


I don't know what it was about this game, but it was very satisfying to play. I actually enjoyed going through a sequence to start up the machine, and I just had to be ready to eject, as anyone who has played the game would likely be all too familiar with. While not an aviation game, it still was technically my last joystick purchase.

A slight story on that, as i'm sure it was quite strange at the time.. The game's large box looked suspicious to anyone who wasn't familiar with the fact that it was a game. In a paranoid America, in the south, roughly a year after 9/11 - One might say that I was looked at very oddly for marching through a very crowded mall with what appeared to be some kind of ammo box. Thankfully, I was not beaten in the parking lot by any assuming police officers.

So where has the love for Joysticks gone? Sure there's a flight stick available for the 360 and PS3. But I am told it is very poorly made. Why can't I get a Star Wars: Tie Fighter as an XBLA release with heavy suggestion on a very nice joystick? Flying around with a joystick. I miss it... I miss it so much.