Hardware: The Gravis Gamepad
For retro gamers in general, the Gravis Gamepad probably does not require a lot of introduction: Many DOS PC games offered it as a control scheme and it was fairly popular. What is often overlooked is that an Amiga version existed as well and it is definitely worth a look.
These are not all that common but they do occasionally come up for sale. Unfortunately, auctions for Gravis pads are not always marked with what version it is so try to get a look at the connector. The Amiga one should of course have the 9 pin Atari style connector.
What you get is a nice feeling gamepad with pretty solid construction that does not feel cheap or flimsy in your hands.
On the front, we have 4 face buttons. For Amiga use, these are mapped as primary and secondary fire button (many Amiga games support a second button. If a game menu has a “gamepad” option this is usually what it means. Many games have also been patched with WHDLoad to support a second button).
The other two buttons are then the autofire buttons. Most joystick and pads with autofire has it as a switch that must be clicked on or off. Here you can move between the auto fire version of each button and the regular at will. This is really handy for games like Chaos Engine where holding the fire button activates the special weapon and fiddling with an autofire switch can get awkward. This is not a common arrangement but it is really handy to have.
The directional pad (Dpad) is decent. It does diagonals quite well (a worry with a lot of gamepads. Trying to play Alien Breed on an NES style Dpad is pretty miserable) but unfortunately the Dpad is very slippery due to being so smooth. It was meant to have a tiny joystick screwed into the center but mine didn’t come with it included. I am a little dubious how well that might have worked in any event but you could probably knock together your own version with a 3D printer these days.
The above features (two button input, separate autofire for each and a nice Dpad) would be enough to make this a great pad but there are two additional switches, one on the top and one on the bottom of the pad. One disables the autofire and instead maps two buttons to up and down respectively. For those of you who prefer console-style platform controls, this is for you. It is also handy in many racing games where accelerating and decelerating on the Dpad can be a bit awkward. Do note that it does not disable the normal Dpad controls.
The second button switches the pad into a “left handed” mode where the Dpad directions change. This is pretty unique and its a nice accessibility feature that few companies ever thought about, though most left-handed players I know ended up just learning to use the regular controllers available.
All in all, this is a great gamepad if you can manage to find one.
