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I have one of these - while the tilt sensors are really great (insert numerous expressions of over-excitement) in racing games, it's utterly useless in FPS or other games. I wonder if Nintendo will solve the accuracy problem usually associated with tilt sensors in gamepads...

I also use Girder and an ATI Remote Wonder for my HTPC setup. The ATI remote came bundled with a Radeon 7500 All In Wonder and they work flawlessly together. The MyHTPC software also works wonders. There is an ATI Remote Wonder plugin available for MyHTPC too.

As for the keyboard and mouse, I use a Logitech cordless mouse and keyboard which does the job nicely. I keep the mouse on the coffee table and the keyboard in one of the drawers. The only tricky part is keeping the RF receiver on the computer far enough away from the components in your home theater as the cord on the unit is not very long.

I also have a 4 port USB hub running to a spot under the couch that allows me to quickly connect or disconnect things like USB Thumb Drives or USB Gamepads. I use the gamepads for many of the games on the system like GTA Vice City and MAME. Specifically I like the Gravis Gamepad Pro (BB $15, Nice mapping software), the Nyko AirFlo PC (BB $20, Dual Analog sticks, Air Flow technology), and if you can find it the GF USB Control Pad (BB $10, Dual Analog sticks). All of the gamepads work well with Girder and the games I use them for. Sometimes it is nice to have 3 or 4 different gamepads for N64 Emulators because it is easier to know which gamepad you are configuring. Before I had 4 Gravis Gamepad Pro's which was a pain because I had to label them 1 - 4 but windows would not allow me to change their names.

Of course VNC is a must but aside from that if you get your bindings tight in girder you can do almost anything with MyHTPC and a good remote.

I, too, was in search of a good controller to use for emulation, so i picked up a Gravis Eliminator Aftershock. At first it was pretty cool. It has lots of features, like mouse and keyboard emulation, that make it so that your hands don't have to leave the controller to select a new game in your emulator. The overall position of the buttons and sticks got annoying after extended use, and the D-pad doesn't seem to be calibrated correctly. I would much prefer to have bought a PS2 controller and an adapter. The D-pad on a PS2 controller has individual directions so you know which direction you are hitting. Also, the sticks are in more accessible locations.

I searched high and low and wasn't able to find a site with any information or a picture of the product but good old eBay came through again. I hate linking to eBay as the links expire so I swiped somebody's photo and put it on my site. You can see it here. I found it by searching for "gravis gamepad" and wading through the results. The best part is they seem to be selling for about $1 (U.S. funds) so it might be worthing buying one just to try it out.

I hope someone finds this useful.

Well, at least one of their controllers was not garbage. I've lived very happily with a pair of Gravis Xterminators for the past five years (gameport connector, not the more recent USB thingies by the same name), used mostly for successive generations of extended sessions of EA Sports NHL '99-'04. Exuberant, hard-gripping, sweaty sessions of that game. And they offered a passthrough on their connector so you could chain two controllers to a single gameport. Not quite as good as Microsoft's gameport connectors on the back of their original Sidewinders, but acceptable. The Xterminators were really my ideal gamepads. They have both digital and analog D-pads, offer the usual 6 buttons on the right, plus a hat switch, right/left triggers, throttle, start & select buttons, and paddle switches perfect for pinball-style games. They remind me somewhat of Xbox controllers in form factor--but I haven't played an Xbox, so that's purely a visual connection. I can say that I was always comfortable plaing games with the Xterminators for hours on end. I paid something like CDN$90 per controller when I bought them, but I was hapy to pay that because I had used their controllers ever since my Amiga-owning days, and they had never let me down with faulty units. (The first Gravis joystick I purchased offered customizable stiffness for the X & Y axes, which was pretty cool for late eighties technology). The Xterminator combo has lasted extremely well, and only yesterday did the combination of tempting holiday rebates, rumblepad allure, consistently top ranking in PC Game magazine, and easy connectivity to friend's computers seduce me into purchasing a pair of Logitech Wingman Rumblepads (USB). I had contacted Gravis months ago telling them that I was looking at purchasing new gamepads and interested in finding a Canadian distributor for their new USB Gravis Xterminator Force Feedback gamepads, but they never returned my email... and in the mean time, I did read some very negative reviews about the quality of the new units. Finally, the lack of analog input would limit my capabilities in the new EA Sports franchises--so my choice was made to abandon Gravis with this generation of gamepads. If they had simply updated their original Xterminators to add force feedback and USB connectors, I would have been playing hockey with those last night instead of the new Wingmans. Ah well...

All slashdot readers I urge you to save your money and download visual boy advance.

Buy a gamepad for your pc (just like the snes controller) - and you can get it for $9.99 at Wal-Mart, instead of the websites advertised $19.99.

And download kazaa lite (I use overnet for everything, but you can't find GBA Roms on overnet.)

As long as you don't mind playing games on your pc screen (which i don't think any of you do) as opposed to hooking it up to your tv screen, then there's a good chunk of change you'll save.

Plus you'll be able to "preview" any gba title on your pc.

Oh, and if you like the game--BUY IT!!! Make sure you support those people who develop the kick ass games!!!

I have found the Gravis Gamepad Pro to be the perfect gamepad to use with ZSNES as the layout is exactly the same plus the two additional shoulder buttons work well for speeding up/slowing down emulation

The only problem is I got a dodgy gameport model that the d-pad is overly sensitive with down-angles

To which I say: who cares? As long as people (managers) will be confusing the things. (Like: "Firebird DB? Must be from the same guys that do Firebird Browser. I tried that, didn't like it. Hence - we are not using the DB." etc...).

FirebirdSQL may be top of the search results pile now, but they took that position from someone else too....

you can get a cheap USB gamepad for the computer. It will automatically detect a game, download default/popular button settings to use in a game like GTA3.

What I really want is one of these controllers so that I can play SF2 again and do Zangief's piledriver at will.

I remember that Gravis had a joystick mouse a bit like this a few years ago.

Speaking of gravis, I still have my original gamepad sitting next to my box. Don't use it much now, but it's cool to have a gamepad for a pc developed when the best had to play was cga/ega games. Still, Commander Keen was cool... I'll try to check those old floppies and play it again.