I have the hardest time getting most of my good old games to recognize today's gaming peripherals. As an example, I've tried everything I know to play Redneck Rampage with a controller/gamepad with no success, yet I played this game flawlessly with a gamepad back when it first came out!! Granted, it was a simpler gamepad (it looked a bit like a SNES controller for reference), but it worked great, and I got pretty far into the game and enjoyed it immensely.

No matter what I try though I can't get it to recognize any sort of gamepad/controller I might have plugged in. And the same goes for a couple of other good old games, particularly those that run under DOSBOX.

So, could folks post their successes/failures to get current tech gamepads, controllers, flightsticks, steering wheels, or whatever to work in some of their gog collections??? Particularly interested in those games running under DOSBOX as that seems to be the ones that give me the most trouble.

But if you wouldn't mind was wondering if you could just post name of game, type of controller, and whether when you tried it you had success or no success.

I'll start with the one fresh on my mind and may post more when I test again to ensure my memory is correct.

Redneck Rampage - 360 Controller for Windows - NO Success

EDIT: Oh, maybe OS makes a difference??? I'm running Windows 7 - 64 bit.

Perhaps that would be a good thing to add.

Do you have a gamepad that allows you to switch between the modern "Xinput" and the former "directinput"? Xinput devices may be the source of your problem. In any case, no Joy2Key or Xpadder, I take it? Not perfect but it's generally worked pretty well for me.

edit: Ah, yes, 360 controllers are Xinput devices.

Sorry, I don't even know what "Xinput" and "directinput" mean or have to do with so I can't answer that.

And no, I don't have Joy2Key or Xpadder, but I do have a Logitech gamepad that came with free profiler software that I have used successfully to map keys and play games with no direct controller support with a controller (such as Gothic 1) but IIRC I even tried that with Redneck Rampage and it just didn't recognize the thing was there at all, so mapping keys to it didn't help.

There were also two other games that I THINK gave me the same trouble but I want to test again before I post because I might not be remembering them right and they were also DOSBOX games. But I am confident with Redneck Rampage because I just tried that one again and still nothing.

One time, and I can't remember but think it was with the Logitech controller, I finally got Redneck Rampage to recognize it was there because when I moved the stick the character finally moved, but no matter what I tried he would only move in one direction and it wasn't recognizing any of the buttons to fire.

I think Shaolin is on the right track here. Joy2Key is probably going to be your best bet with games like that. It isn't the perfect solution, but I think you should give it a try. Worse comes to worst, you can always try out a different controller.

They're input drivers. The 360 controller introduced "Xinput" as the new standard and naturally a lot of older games don't support it. "Directinput" was the old standard and there are some controllers which will let you switch to that driver instead. The Logitech F710 for example. Yeah, that's basically what the two programs I mentioned do, I don't know if they would be able to do it better, per se,
but Joy2Key's basic features are available for free if you want to try it out.

http://joytokey.net/en/overview

Xpadder is ten bucks. Hmm... Maybe Redneck Rampage just has crappy controller support to begin with.

If you can play any FPS with a stick/pad/controller and be good at them you shouldn't be in here playing games, you should be a test pilot or an astronaut because you obviously have the talent and coordination for it.

Xpadder 5.3 is free

I would recommend a gamepad that have a switch for Xinput and DirectInput as that would ease up on the hassle plus utilize Joy2Key or Xpadder would maximize the chances of getting it working with as many games as possible.

I don't think so, I played it an awful lot, and my son played it even more than I did (he was still at home then) and we both used a controller for that game and it worked great. He got even further than I did in it, but that's no big shock, he was pretty good at all the video games then. And again, this was nearly 20 years ago when the game came out.

I've really been wanting to play it because the gog version has the cuss pack, and I never have played it with the cuss pack before. Plus, I never played the other two follow up games that come with the gog version.

But I simply can't play a game with WASD movement keyboard and mouse. Just can't do it. It's either play with a controller or don't play.

And a lot of these old games I'm talking about had built in support. Like the old Wing Commander games ALL had built in gamepad/joystick support IIRC. Many, many, many classics had built in gamepad/joystick support.

Built-in "directinput" support, remember. Try out Joy2key or that free version of Xpadder Nirth put up, otherwise you'll have to find an older gamepad or purchase a switchable one.

Yeah, I will give it a go. The funny thing is, the old games recognize my mouse, which is plugged into a USB slot instead of the PC round slot. They generally recognize USB mice but seem to have trouble recognizing USB controllers. The old gamepads/joysticks were all serial based, IIRC I used to plug them into my sound card LOL.

Hehe, yeah, I remember plugging in my Sidewinder that way. Good times.

Well, these games should work with your gamepad:

http://www.gog.com/mix/games_that_love_the_xbox_360_controller

I'm still unclear on how to tell whether something is "directinput" or not, but I did want to say that giving another gamepad a go worked. I ordered a USB gamepad that looks very much like the old gamepad I used to use (this one and just received it and over the weekend tested it and IT WORKS on Redneck Rampage, just like the old days. In fact, it not only works, but the Reneck Rampage setup application recognizes it and it's buttons, something it didn't with my Xbox 360 controller.

So, I'm hoping it also works on some of the other older games that for whatever reason didn't seem to much like the Xbox 360 controller. LOL, I've still got my old gamepad, and old joystick and old Steering Wheel and gas pedal combo I used to play with back in the 90's, but they're all serial plug ins, not USB.