It's a very rare occasion when I try out some new or cool technology for myself and I manage to actually be able to enjoy it. It's even rarer when it goes completely without any hassle or compromise to myself. I read reports of people using their Wii Remotes for PC tasks such as mouse emulation and makeshift digital whiteboards, but I had something much simpler in mind: mount the Classic Controller as a normal PC joystick. Completely to my surprise, one trip to Wal-Mart and a $20 Bluetooth adapter later, that's exactly what I accomplished. I just got off playing Salamander 2 on MAME and I never felt so alive playing it with anything else (not counting my old cheap PS2 arcade joystick, RIP). I suppose I should post my findings for the benefit of the community.

Notice: The latest version of this guide is available at http://whatistheexcel.com/2008/04/06/classic-controller-glovepie-one-happy-exy/. As I'm still working out caveats and other odd behaviors of the drivers, I expect to have to tweak this often. If you have to bookmark this, I highly recommend you bookmark that instead.

The process I followed is as such (this is for Windows only; other OSes are out of my experience):

1. Purchase a Bluetooth adapter that is compatible with the Wii Remote. The one I used is the IOGear GBU221WM, available at Wal-Mart for $20.
2. Get drivers (see above link). The CD that came with mine is perfect for the job. The built-in drivers with Windows XP SP2 won't be able to maintain the connection with the remote. When the drivers are finished installing, you will be prompted to connect a Bluetooth device.
3. Press the Sync button under the battery cover of your remote(s).
4. Go through the wizard to add the remote. There is no passkey associated with it, so leave any fields regarding the passkey blank. There is only one service associated with the remote; check that and click Next to begin driver detection for the remote.
5. Get GlovePIE and extract it somewhere. The latest version is compatible with the Nunchuk, the Classic Controller and even the Guitar Hero III controller.
6. Get PPJoy. I had to change the .zip.exe extension to just .exe to shut my virus scanner up. All it does is start a downloader and extract the files to C:\Downloads\Simtel\PPJoySetup.
7. When installing PPJoy, you'll be asked to either stop or continue installing unsigned drivers. Don't mind them and press on.
8. I’m not sure if I had to restart or something, but you might have to. When that’s done, open the PPJoy panel from the Start Menu and create a virtual joystick with 4 axes, 16 buttons and 0 POV hats. Leave the axis mappings to their defaults and change button 1 to “nothing”.* All of the other mappings can be left to their defaults; click the Next button until you get back to the list of virtual joysticks.
9. Download this script and load it in GlovePIE.
10. Click Start and start playing your games. The first controller will be detected as joystick 2 with most newer games.

Note: I mapped the D-pad buttons to buttons 13-16 on the virtual joystick for compatibility reasons. I find that some PC games I play auto-detect buttons 13-16 as directional buttons. No one will miss it, I'm sure.
If you find that your controller lags significantly, I have no better advice at this time than to restart and try step 4 again.
I found that button 1 maps to POV Up in SNES9x, even though no POVs are defined. I had to map button 1 to null in order to work around this.

If there's anything wrong, leave comments and I'll elaborate on what I missed.

Now if only I can get my hands on a Hori arcade stick...