 Hey guys, I'm ready for the LAN party with a mouse and keyboard What are you thinking dude you're crazy man Oh, thank God it's only a dream Yep, the 90s were a wild time Apple nearly went bankrupt Genco genes 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 thrust master 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 Hetzner offers high-performance cloud service for a great price with their US locations in Ashburn, Virginia You can deploy load balancers block storage and more in just a few seconds use code LTT22 for $20 off at the link below. Which do you want to start with? I want to start with the frag master Okay, sweet with this one. We got used off of eBay Mm-hmm, and you can kind of tell the packaging is a little beat up I would expect anything this old to be I think you might want to explore the packaging before you get inside because there is 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 megahertz mode increase your FPS frag possessive frags per second Use it as a regular four axis joystick or select the exclusive Megahertz mode and change your up down left right movement ultra-fast nose control That's gonna be terrible Instead of a simple XY, which by the way is also any direction We've got two rotational axes You ready David? Yes, is your body ready though? It never was for the frag master. Oh 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. It'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 because I didn't have a good computer at the time and In order to look up and down you actually used keyboard buttons. Oh Okay this Wow couple problems out of the gate Okay, I see the mouse like movement here, right? It's a joystick obviously like thrust master 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 like like a scrolling action versus a 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 a counter lever 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 Yeah, turns out we don't have anything at LMG that can run this Because it uses game port to game ports. So that's to daisy chain it daisy chain it with what so like it basically thrust master if you had like a hodas and you had like Your joystick and your throttle you could daisy chain it and I don't know what you daisy chain it to in this scenario But that's the whole point. Hey, what'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 Wow Ladner Computer Center We were born in the same place buddy and around the same time and I know I know we should be using the CRT. Oh Yeah, where's the CRT? It's right there. It's right there. We don't have a way to screen cap. Oh Okay, yeah, this is drifting very okay actually is it drifting or is it Is what the frag master? 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 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 now it's in the dead zone. Uh-huh. No, it's still drifting Oh, no, is it just maybe it was on an angle when you plugged it in Okay, so it's all sort of messed up. I don't know that game ports actually technically support hot plugs So we'll see how this goes Okay, not detected. Okay. Hey, I think it zeros when you plug it in. 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 So you need to tip it to look up and down And it'll go to the max 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. I don't in this game apparently It's not a joystick. It's a joystick It's a joystick It's a joystick And I think you're supposed to put it in the left and right to that does nothing Not in this game. I in this game apparently not I was the quake bindings. Hold on a minute here if I have to Press a button to go forward. Where where were the bindings? W A S D N D Push grips forward back to move forward back. Whoa slide grips left and right Just strafe It doesn't work also. And it sits and superimposes the instructions over my, or is it, is that in the game? No, that's in their software. So if you're using your mouse and keyboard and you have the Fragmaster 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, yeah. Certainly. Okay, I need to, I wanna walk. So I guess I need to. What's wrong Linus? What's wrong? This controller is wrong. Oh, okay. Yeah. Blame a shoddy workman blames his tools. I was blaming my tools. You'd know. What? Cause I'd blamed you. 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. Yep, it's on the Thrustmaster support website. Advanced game auto setup utility. Oh. How was this advanced? Half-Life has a joystick enabled toggle. 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. 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 over shooting it. I think it's time to move on to the Sidewinder Dual Strike. Let's just hope it's not the Sidewinder Strike 2. Come on, that's pretty funny. What? Limited one-year warranty included. Combines the agility of a game pad 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, 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 track ball 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. I was like, I have a D button. 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 like 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. Attention, the following instructions are crucial to using the Sidewinder tool. Please listen carefully. Oh my goodness. What they imagine a gamer looks like in a button up shirt because you're Microsoft and you're stuffy and it's the late nineties 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 mouse pad? You figure it out. Settings, oh, you can change your sensitivity, acceleration on and off. And it goes to the setting to be just a joystick. Okay, okay, all right. It's definitely more polished than the Fragmaster. All right, up down, pan left, right, move forward with that. You can see the Thrustmaster stuff is still invading. That's really annoying. Strafing works. You can go at a diagonal, which was kind of 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. It's 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, 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 Fragmaster, 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, price of these on eBay, it's gonna skyrocket. Just like I'm gonna rocket to telling you about our sponsor. Oh. War Thunder. War Thunder is a free to play online military vehicle combat game. Available on a Windows Mac, Linux, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X with cross play. It features 10 playable nations and an incredible arsenal of over 2,000 historically accurate playable tanks, aircrafts, and ships from the 1910s to vehicles still in service today. You'll compete in massive combined arms battles on over 100 major battlefields from World War II to modern environments. War Thunder's vehicles are implemented with a high level of authenticity and detail. So their speed, their armor, their firepower, and model are as close to real life as possible without compromising on gameplay. Their damage models are realistic and dynamic, adding a huge amount of depth that's rarely matched by other free to play games. Head to the link below and start playing War Thunder for free. You can also get a free bonus premium vehicle just for signing up. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll also enjoy the inspiration for it. We went through old issues of Maximum PC and reminisced about what was and what thankfully there isn't anymore.