- Hey, guys! I'm ready for the LAN party!
- With a mouse and keyboard?
- What a weirdo!
(Riley and Adam laughing)
- No!
- What are you thinking, dude?
You're crazy, man!
(Linus shrieks) (Riley cackling)
(Linus grunts)
- Oh, thank god. It was only a dream.
No!
Yep, the '90s were a wild time.
Apple nearly went bankrupt, JNCO jeans were cool,
and games like "Doom" and "Quake"
were taking the world by hellstorm.
But many folks struggled
to adapt to first-person control schemes,
so clever designers thought,
"Could there be a better way?"
and came up with these,
the Thrustmaster Frag Master
and the Microsoft Sidewinder Dual Strike.
Both of them claim to give you a better experience
than a mouse and keyboard.
So what happened to them?
Have we been missing out all this time?
Or did we narrowly avoid a dark alternate timeline
where the mouse and keyboard went extinct?
And Linus didn't tell the audience about his sponsor!
- Hetzner.
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- Which do you want to start with?
- I want to start with the Frag Master.
- Okay, sweet.
Well, this one we got used off of eBay.
And you can kinda tell the packaging's a little beat up.
- I would expect anything this old to be pretty used.
- I think you might want to explore the packaging
before you get inside,
'cause there's some pretty funny stuff on it.
- I think I do!
"Master any move."
Like "the popular 'circle strafe' maneuver."
Is that considered a maneuver anymore?
I think we just call it kiting.
The "side strafe."
I'm sorry, I didn't see this.
"Evade incoming rockets by sliding left and right
while 'attacking' forward to get the frag."
"MegaHurts Mode"?
"Increase your FPS, frag..."
Uh, possessive, "frag's per second."
- [David] Hey!
- "Use it as a regular four-axis joystick
or select the exclusive MegaHurts mode
and change your up/down and left/right movement
to ultra-fast mouse control."
That's gonna be terrible.
Instead of a simple X/Y,
which by the way is also any direction,
we've got two rotational axes.
You ready, David? - Yes.
- Is your body ready though-
- [David] It never was.
- For the Frag Master.
(gasps) The driver CD!
It looks like a game.
I love this branding. Windows 95 and 98.
You know, something a lot of people don't realize,
especially you younger folks,
is that in the early FPS gaming days,
there wasn't really a standard control scheme.
It wasn't just WASD and mouse like we have today.
Or ASDF, or whatever.
That's still pretty standard.
There was all kinds of stuff.
Like, I remember sitting and trying to play
an early "Unreal Tournament" game on my friend's computer,
'cause I didn't have a good computer at the time.
And in order to look up and down,
you actually used keyboard buttons.
Okay.
This...
Wow.
Couple problems.
(Adam sputters) Right outta the gate.
Okay.
I see the mouse-like movement here, right?
It's a joystick, obviously.
Like, Thrustmaster.
Joystick company.
So basically they took a joystick, right?
And then they put this on it.
So here's how you kind of move.
But you'd be stuck with more like a scrolling action
versus, like, being able to move it faster
in order to control how far you're going
and how quickly you're doing it.
Problem number two is as soon as you do any of this,
it starts to...
It starts to go the other way,
like there's kind of a counter-lever.
- Yeah.
- This is going to be awful.
Lots of buttons, credit for that.
You've got two paddles on the back, on each side.
Okay, then you've got three on the front.
RIP the three-button controller layout, by the way.
Sega Genesis fans, you know.
- Turns out we don't have anything at LMG that can run this-
- Oh. - Because it uses Gameport.
- Two Gameports.
- So that's to daisy chain it. - Oh, wait.
Daisy chain it with what?
- So basically, Thrustmaster, if you had like a HOTAS
and you had your joystick and your throttle,
you could daisy chain it.
And I don't know what you'd daisy chain it to
in this scenario, but that's the whole point.
- But hey, it's there.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- So we had to ask Anthony to bring in his computer.
- Oh, and that's what this is, I'm assuming.
- Yeah.
♪ Da da da da da da da da da da ♪
- Wow.
Ladner Computer Center.
We were born in the same place, buddy.
And, uh, around the same time.
- And I know we should be using the CRT.
- Oh, yeah, where's the CRT?
- It's right there. - It's right there!
- But we don't have a way to screencap.
- Oh.
Okay.
Uh, yeah, this is drifting very-
- Okay. Actually, is it drifting?
Or is it...
- Is what? - The Frag Master-
- Oh!
(Linus laughs)
I sincerely hope there's a calibration tool
in their software because I have it deflected this much
in order to keep the mouse from drifting to the right.
- Like, if you press- - Oh, wait.
Oh, I see.
Oh, it's got a cute little animation.
- So you can see...
Oh, now you're not gonna be drifting.
Now it's in the dead zone.
- Uh-huh. No, it's still drifting.
- Oh, no. Maybe it was on an angle when you plugged it in.
- Okay, maybe try unplugging. - So it's all sorta messed up.
- I don't know that Gameports
actually technically support hot-plug,
so we'll see how this goes.
Okay, not detected.
Okay!
Hey, I think it zeroes when you plug it in.
- [Adam] Yeah.
- Are you ready for the Frag Master?
Joystick settings.
Interesting, this early "Half Life 1" demo
actually doesn't think it's crazy
for you to play with a joystick.
Okay.
(whimsical music)
- So you need to tip it to look up and down.
And it'll go to the max limits of looking up and down.
And to move forward, you use a button.
- What does sliding it to the left and right do?
So that does nothing?
- Not in this game. In this game, apparently not.
- Where's the "Quake" bindings? Hold on a minute here.
If I have to press a button to go forward...
Where were the bindings?
What if you WASD and do...
"Push grips forward/back to move forward/back." Whoa!
"Slide grips left and right to strafe."
This is supposed to strafe.
- Yeah, it doesn't work. Also-
- And it sits and superimposes the instructions over my...
Or is that in the game?
- No, that's in their software.
So if you're using your mouse and keyboard
and you have the Frag Master software installed,
it will always say that.
It is cool that they integrated it
specifically into the tutorial.
And it will even time up with where you are in the tutorial.
- This is run,
and this is walk.
I have to press both of them.
- It's easier than a mouse and keyboard though.
- Oh, certainly. - Yeah.
- Okay, I need to...
I'm on walk, so I guess I need to...
(Adam snickering)
(Adam chuckles)
- What's wrong, Linus?
- What's wrong? This controller is wrong.
- Oh, okay, yeah.
A shoddy workman blames his tools.
- If I was blaming my tools, you'd know.
(Adam laughs)
- What?
- 'Cause I'd have blamed you.
- Oh. - Hey, got him. Roasted.
Come on, you invited the tool joke.
Oh good, I get to do platforming now.
Crap! This is so frustrating.
If I bought this, I would return it immediately.
It's weird 'cause I can like...
I can thrust forward. I'm the master of that.
- It's on the Thrustmaster support website.
- Advanced game auto setup utility.
- Oh.
(Adam and crew laugh)
- How was this advanced?
"Half Life" has a joystick enable toggle.
- [David] Oh!
- Are you boys ready to master fragging?
We're in! - Yeah!
- We're in! - We figured it out.
- We hacked the Matrix.
Look at this advanced maneuver.
I'm gonna get so many frags.
The thing is,
having to reverse back to a neutral position
to stop moving is bad.
Right? Stop moving needs to be stop moving.
When I'm trying to line up with a door
as I'm turning into it,
that there's a quarter of a second delay
while I return to center,
I'm overshooting it. - Oh, yeah, yeah.
- I think it's time to move on
to the Sidewinder Dual Strike.
Let's just hope it's not the Sidewinder Strike Two.
Come on, that's pretty funny. (David mimics sad trombone)
- What?
- "Limited one-year warranty included.
Combines the agility of a gamepad
with the precision of a mouse.
Rotating perspective control for three-dimensional action."
Now, you told me that this was brand-new in-box.
- This was mint, it was from CompUSA
and it had a sticker on it for the year 2000.
- Okay. - It also had warranty.
Like, it had a guaranteed warranty sticker
that you could buy a warranty.
Which is the most computer store thing in existence.
Look at that beauty.
- This feels more like a weird puzzle
that you're trying to take apart than a game controller.
It doesn't even-
- It's not a ball. - No, it's not.
I expected it to be more like a trackball
integrated into a thing.
So you actually rotate or tilt,
and those are the only two axes.
This is going to be atrocious.
How could they possibly have released this into the wild?
At least the buttons are labeled.
We've got a D button.
I mean, I like the D.
- Uh, yeah, I was gonna...
I have a D button.
- [David] Just a button? (giggles)
- This feels like it would be really fatiguing to use.
- Yeah. - There's no way to rest.
You have to actually be able to manipulate it
in 3D space at all times.
Like, you can't just rest it on the desk
or rest it in your lap and play.
All right.
Control. Okay, we've got a...
- Yeah, here we go.
- [Instructor] Attention!
The following instructions are crucial
to using the Sidewinder Dual Strike.
Please listen carefully.
(Linus laughs)
- Oh my goodness.
What they imagined a gamer looks like, in a button-up shirt.
Because you're Microsoft and you're stuffy
and it's the late '90s and you...
"Well, we know that gamers are just, like,
sitting with Cheeto dust all over their desks,
but we gotta be professional here."
Whoa!
My mouse is working right now though.
Interesting.
It looks like the range of motion here
is just a little greater than the width of my display.
How am I expected to handle
getting to the edge of my virtual mousepad?
- You'll figure it out.
- Settings. Oh, you can change your sensitivity.
Acceleration on and off.
- And you can also set it to be just a joystick.
- Okay, okay, all right.
It's definitely more polished than the Frag Master.
All right. Up/down.
Pan left/right. Move forward, move back.
- You can see the Thrustmaster stuff
is still invading your game. - Oh, wow.
That's really annoying.
Strafing works.
You can go at a diagonal,
which was kinda hard to do with the Thrustmaster.
This hat is awful.
How am I supposed to jump and crouch though?
If it's A and D...
- Just gotta be quick.
- Oh yeah, okay, I got it.
Man, it really...
You end up with your wrist
in kind of a weird position sometimes
when it's not zeroed in the right spot.
It feels like a real good shortcut to carpal tunnel town.
Like, the fact that you can whip at all
just means you have a chance to be like,
oh yeah, enemy, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Not being limited by just the scrolling
or panning speed of a joystick is obviously superior.
The only question remaining, "Dark Souls" players,
is can you even run these things on a modern computer?
Spoiler alert: with the Frag Master, uh, no such luck.
But what we haven't tried yet is the Sidewinder Dual Strike.
Here it is. Look at this!
Sidewinder Dual Strike USB version one.
And here's my two axes. It's a joystick.
That means any game
that you could bind to joystick controls,
feasibly you could actually play with it.
- It's the end of the mouse and keyboard era, man.
It's coming.
- Just watch. The price of these on eBay is gonna skyrocket.
Just like I'm gonna rocket to telling you about our sponsor!
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- If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe you'll also enjoy the inspiration for it
where we went through old issues of Maximum PC
and reminisced about what was
and what thankfully there isn't anymore.