You can easily imagine how little Joypads or joysticks are used for a PC now. Not only because video games are now played on consoles but also because most pc games use mouse and keyboard.
All those who have a joypad or a USB joystick can still return to use it to control the computer and, therefore, to play any game, even those online or in flash, or simply to surf the internet or to move the controls of the media center if you don't have a remote control.
Games like Super Mario or Street Fighter, which, as seen, are available for free on the internet, can be played with the joypad even if, in theory, they could only be played with the keyboard.
There are in fact two emulation programs that allow you to program the joypad or joystick to do practically anything, " mapping " the buttons to make them act as keyboard keys and to move the mouse.
The first program to report is JoyToKey, free, very old but which should work on all Windows versions.
When you run it, a window appears showing the figure of the joypad connected to the computer and the buttons that can be changed.
To configure the keys, just click on them and set the corresponding key on the computer keyboard.
You can also configure the joystick to simulate mouse movements, and also to launch specific commands.
From the "command" tab you can set the start of a program by pressing a button on the joypad.
To know which button is 1, 2 etc., you can refer to the Windows tool for the general configuration of the joypad.
Going to the control panel, with the pad connected, you should find the joystick management program which, in this case, can only serve to understand how the buttons are identified.
In the case of more recent joypads, such as those used in consoles and analogue ones, you need to enable the Axes and Pov options in the Other tab so as to make these keys appear among the mappable ones and perfect the keyboard emulation.
A newer and better program is Xpadder .
This software is paid but you can find the download for Xpadder 5.3 on the internet, which is free.
Xpadder 5.3 works on Windows XP and Vista; on Windows 7 you have to use the compatibility mode.
The joypad can thus emulate both the keyboard and the mouse so as to be able to control the computer remotely or to play browser games in flash, with the joystick.
Being more advanced Xpadder, the configuration to map the keys is much more intuitive thanks to a graphical interface and an almost guided procedure.
