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Especially the first part of the series. It focused on the weird leveldesign, smooth controle over the spaceship and extreme fast action. Descent 2 was the same, but the levels began to become "slower". The 3d-engine of the 3rd part had problems with it's collision detection and the leveling of the spaceship was much worse that in the other two parts. I still play the linuxport of D from time to time, and have a lot of fun. I'm using my old Thrustmaster TopGun http://www.joy-stick.net/images/TopGun.gif , an oldschool flightstick. Another great game ist TIE-Fighter, which run smoothly under dosbox and (IMHO) the best action-flightsim ever, TFX.

there were two that were ultimates.

The Hammerhead FX (second revision with USB, the first had a D-pad that was way to ridged and tight) gave you everything you needed, for any game; D-pad, two analogs, six face buttons (GREAT for six-button arcade fighting titles), two shoulder buttons and two back triggers. It was my gaming pad for 90% of the MAME library as well as for NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, and PSX emulation.

For something that needs a flight controller, you can't go better than the Airstik from the sadly-deceased VrStandard corporation. Light as a feather, didn't have tons of buttons but had enough, on-the-fly switch between 3 sensitivity modes, and will actually still plug in to the default Vista drivers and run flawlessly. How many top-of-the-line sticks do you know that can run on any system's default drivers and run flawlessly?

Sadly, both of the companies are dead. VRStandard killed themselves trying to push 3D glasses and went under during the switch to Windows 2000 when the Win3D company (who'd been their outsource partners for 2000 drivers) went under. Good luck finding drivers for the VRJoy headsets these days - even the independent guys haven't bothered to update them and nobody seems to have archived the older ones.

Interact got bought out by MadCatz (well, the Gameshark stuff anyways) and the rest of the old product lines got dumped completely.

as I found it to be one of the best methods of playing FPS games, especially Descent. While not perfer for other games it had a level of control and ease of control that was hard to match.

The ASCIISphere was a version which existed for the PS2 playstation
http://playstation.video-game-store.info/B00001ZUT U/Agetec-ASCII-Sphere-360.html

Some information on this controller,
http://www.mindflux.com.au/products/spacetec/sorb3 60.html (product information from former seller)

Old review.
http://www.joy-stick.net/reviews/other/orb360.htm

Closest to current support you can get, as in enthusiast who moved it to XP/2000

http://www.planethardware.com/spaceorb/

There used to be one: The SpaceORB 360. Sadly, it's not made any longer. SpaceTec later folded and had its assets acquired by LabTec, who still manufacture high-end 3D input devices, mostly targeted at the CAD market.

Schwab

This had 6 degrees of freedom waaaay back in `98. Didn't sell real well, bout the only game I could actually sit thru the learning curve on was Mechwarrior III. It could have been nice for another input device (3D CAD) but I could never get it working how I thought it should, & there was very little support for Win2k & up.

Jaysyn

Logitech have also had a gamepad with it. The Logitech Wingman Gamepad Extreme. I've had it for years and its a nice little toy. Like one of the first USB devices I ever bought.

I remember seeing TV ads for these things. Basically, it's a vest that reacts to low-frequency sound like bass from firing a rocket in Quake... you get shaken pretty good. It works with any audio source, so pr0n is definately an option.

From the site:

"It requires no software or drivers, and simply plugs into your soundcard audio out jack. "

An interesting use for this, for people with two sound outs (back and front), like the SB Live!, would be to use this in the back plug... it could almost be a surround-sound experience!

To quote from another review, found at this page near the bottom,

"Wearing a jetpack-like contraption on your back while playing video games might sound a bit silly, but even though the Aura Interactor is designed to be worn like a backpack or a vest, it also works very well when strapped to the back of your desk chair. This is how I've been using mine, and it works very nicely. The bottom line is that if you're a speed freak who loves sim racing and you've already invested big bucks in video cards, driving wheels, and other computer-related paraphernalia in the pursuit of performance and realism, then you owe it to yourself to spend a measly $20 on an Aura Interactor. You'll definitely feel like you're getting your money's worth, and the return on investment in terms of grins per dollar just can't be beat. "

Now I have to go beg my parents to let me use the credit card :D