Recommendations for something simple to play with a joystick please

[jimbouk]

So I've reclaimed an old PC from my mum which is now for my little boy. Sure 4 is a bit early to have your own computer but we're enjoying playing a bit of Lemmings together (except when they get squished!) and he likes pinball. It's mid spec from 10 years ago and happily running Windows 10.

I also have a joystick which is mostly gathering dust, so can anyone recommend (or even remember) something easy to get going with. I might get Star Wars Episode I: Racer mostly for my enjoyment, but I thought some sort of arcade style flying or space game night suit him better. I did browse the gog back catalogue but the old flight sims looked too complicated and something like Wing commander maybe a bit old (not sure about dos box games and usb joysticks?).

Happy to chuck a few quid at it, Lemmings (+ oh no more, Win 95 edition) I got from an abandonware site but gog/steam/epic all suitable. Just want to inject some magic and fun of computers like I had playing on the BBC micro at a similar age at the end of the 80s. And it course raise a proper gamer who can play RTS games and WASD ftw against those console n00bs

[AGTDenton]

Continuing with the Star Wars theme, there were all the X Wing and Tie Fighter games. I don't recall their difficulty now but they should be joystick compatible and possibly abandon ware.
The X-Wing Collector Series collection updated some of the DOS versions to Windows...

[[GSV]Trig]

Get an Epic Games account, they do free stuff on there, or there's cheap stuff as well that'll probs fit the bill..

[jimbouk]

Was trying to remember the age I played X-Wing, 93 so I would have been 8 or so. Probably looking for something with limited or arcade sorting currently otherwise he's going to keep being blown up! I do have Ellie Dangerous so I could get him to somewhere safe and he could just fly around a bit - might need to do a GPU swap at the least though for that!

I've signed up for secondary steam and epic accounts, keeping my eye out for family friendly freebies!

Flight Unlimited did ring a bell, I think I played a demo back in the day and you could just drop in. Maybe worth trying (1,2 or 3) as they all seem to be abandonware atm. See what works getting installed and with a joystick.

[Percy1983]

I started with my son at a similar age with a spare parts PC (AMD 8350 and 7950 GPU) its had a few upgrades since (now 3700x and R9 290).

Initially we playing emulators mostly mega drive with sonic etc and also the classic Putt-Putt point and click adventures. We then moved onto the lego games (batman, avengers, city, pirates of the caribbean etc) they are al;l great as you can't die but they are great fun to play together in co op. I would say invest in some xbox 360/xbox one controllers.

As it is my son is now 8, playing the Halo MCC, F1 2022, Wreakfest, Minecraft etc, He also likes Pokemon Violet, smash brothers Splatoon 3 etc on emulators these days (can use xbox controleers but we got some third party switch pro controller and connected with blutooth).

Past that we use playnite as it drags in games from epic, stream, ea and you can add emulated games all in one interface.

[Ttaskmaster]

Avoid Daley Thompson's Decathlon, unless you want to break the stick!!

I remember Bomb Jack and River Raid occupied me for many years, around the same age. Loads of joystick-based Spectrum/Atari/similar games to be had on the various emulators, and the graphics are still good enough for getting started in gaming.

Then you have the likes of Starlancer, Freespace, etc... Most also have mods to increase complexity as he progresses.

[jimbouk]

Well I set Elite Dangerous downloading yesterday, 50GB... I don't download large things often but can see why people would pay for more bandwidth who do! Will have a play this evening to see how it works.

Retro is an option as well, cheers.

[Ttaskmaster]

Elite Dangerous has quite the learning curve, IIRC...

If you're really going down that route, why not just go the whole hog and get MS FSX or DCS, and start his FA18 fighter jet training early? He could be a TOPGUN* instructor by the time he leaves secondary school!!





*One word, all caps, don't ask.

[jimbouk]

Yeah I gave up on Elite, interface was just frustrating in the ship amongst other things (maybe I'm missing the button to drop from joystick control to mouse?). But if I can jump him to and interesting location with some asteroids it will be pretty too fly around in for a while.

[jimbouk]

Lemmings continues to be a hit, he's even playing a couple of the easy levels by himself (got an old portable Logitech mouse plugged in which is a bit smaller than normals so more usable).

As for Elite, we've been playing 'together' which has been working well (picture me shouting 'throttle back!' as we hurtle towards a landing pad). Just a bit of taking off, jumping to the next point and landing. I've splashed out £3.99 on a new key for him so I've actually been enjoying it quite a bit so might give it another go after tweak / write down key/button bindings - it is a huge and complicated beast of a game but I can just do some trade runs and try and not get shot by pirates! We already wrote off one of my ships once so don't want to do any permanent damage to my account by accidentality opening fire on a space station!

[[GSV]Trig]

DCS is free for a start, you only get 2 planes though, there are some free community mods (A4c for instance) but some of them need other 'official' planes to work as they use the textures etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

When our kids were that age we were lucky, there were games on CD on cereal packets. Had a couple of Thomas the Tank Engine games as well. Don't know how well those Windows XP games would run these days.

Elite is a brave choice! I feel you really need a HOTAS controller for that game to be easy to play, that was when it really took off for me. Not played for years now, and can't remember if I ever got elite status for exploring (I managed the other two). I see my T-Flight Hotas X now goes for about £60, which is nearly double what I paid for mine a few years back.

At some point there will no doubt be Minecraft.

[jimbouk]

Elite is a brave choice! I feel you really need a HOTAS controller for that game to be easy to play, that was when it really took off for me. Not played for years now, and can't remember if I ever got elite status for exploring (I managed the other two). I see my T-Flight Hotas X now goes for about £60, which is nearly double what I paid for mine a few years back.

Yeah got an old Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X - possibly picked up for Elite way back when. In fact looking back at Amazon history: Order placed 2 January 2016 Total £27.99! £60 these days, can't all be inflation

At some point there will no doubt be Minecraft.

Couldn't get into it myself when my group of friends started playing it, seemed like all you did was search for bugs to exploit to progress... but yeah no doubt we'll get there!

[Percy1983]

I still have a old sidewinder force feedback wheel from 1999, as it is I bought one with that new USB connection as my pentium 2 machine had a couple of ports, due to this it still works great today with forced feedback and everything.

[Saracen999]

Well I set Elite Dangerous downloading yesterday, 50GB... I don't download large things often but can see why people would pay for more bandwidth who do! Will have a play this evening to see how it works.

Retro is an option as well, cheers.

You probably want to avoid Baldur's Gate 3 then (aside from the £50 price tag). The download is 150GB.

150GB !!!!

Flippin' 'eck.

I'm just waiting for a really good discount deal .... and a bigger games hard drive.

[kalniel]

You probably want to avoid Baldur's Gate 3 then (aside from the £50 price tag). The download is 150GB.

Not to mention it's hard to play on a joystick (I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive.)

I was going to suggest the Ace Combat series. 7 is frequently on sale, and earlier games might be available if the hardware reqs are too high. I think my early starts were with terrible mil flight games in the 80s before I discovered the joy of Micropose.