Being a retrogamer also means having made your way through the world of PCs and having faced the very real problems that came with gamepads.

Consoles had one major advantage: an optimized setup. You plugged in the controller and could start playing quickly, without too much trouble. In the PC world, however, the situation was far more drastic, problematic, and full of pitfalls.

Many gamepads required calibration and never felt truly “on point” in their response, driving users absolutely crazy. In some cases, configuring a controller became a challenge before you could even start playing the game itself.

Gravis was one of the few companies that managed to bridge much of this gap. Its GamePad was a marvel for its time, even from an aesthetic point of view, and finally games such as FIFA International Soccer or The Need for Speed allowed us to use something other than the usual keyboard.

I saw it as a kind of revenge. As a proud standard-bearer for PC gaming, I simply couldn’t accept consoles winning hands down, both when it came to polygonal graphics and, above all, playability. And yet, the ’90s were tough for us PC gamers: not only from a graphical point of view, but also when it came to interacting with the very device that was supposed to transport us into the world of video games.

I remember buying not one, but two Gravis GamePads, proud to be able to play together with Darknoise. And even though, as I said, they didn’t solve every problem, those GamePads represented some of the first stepping stones along a road that, in the years that followed, would turn the desktop PC into a true elite gaming machine. Of course, nowadays that comes at prices that can sometimes be completely out of this world!

Seeing a Gravis again almost brings a tear to my eye. Younger gamers will probably never fully understand the obstacles we had to overcome and, perhaps for that very reason, they can never completely appreciate just how much those small victories meant to us.

Today, you simply plug in a controller and play. Back then, even getting a gamepad to work properly could feel like a victory in itself.

Today there is only one password: Gravis before the sun, jousting with the eclipse.

Good Game!