Microsoft SideWinder - Freestyle Pro

Freestyle Pro

The Freestyle Pro, released in 1998, was a rather novel gamepad, as the up-down-left-right directions in analogue mode were controlled by the movement of the controller, more precisely by the absolute pitch and roll position of the pad. This reaction on movement is quite similar to some of the features of the new Sony PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS. Games that did not punish washy control inputs such as Motocross Madness (which was bundled with the controller) profited from this physical interaction. But other games that heavily relied on precision (such as flight simulators) couldn't be controlled precisely with it - as movement was free and not limited by physical bounds as in a traditional analogue joystick/gamepad design, the user could not intuitively say if he moved the controller 100, 50, etc. percent in one direction. Even the "zero position" could not be precisely found, as retracting mechanisms could obviously not be built in.

The control pad had a total of ten digital fire buttons: six buttons controlled with the right thumb (named ABC XYZ), two shoulder buttons (one left, one right), and two buttons controlled with the left thumb, one named start, the other marked with a shift key symbol (as the SideWinder software allowed to use this button to shift controls for the ABC XYZ buttons - on the driver side, it was just an action button like the others).

The left thumb also controlled a D-pad which was rather useless when it came to fast and precise digital movement controls: the D-pad had to be pushed a far way until the action requested was finally registered, and the directions pressed were interpreted too washy (pressing left often resulted in the controller registering a diagonal left-down, for example - a problem that is crucial in versus fighting games). The endless steps throttle in the middle was also not perfectly thought-out: it behaved like an endless scroll wheel on the mechanical side, while the hardware driver assumed it to be an absolute value throttle – scrolling on and on in one direction only caused the hardware driver to rest in either zero percent or 100 percent throttle position.

A sensor button switched the control pad between analogue mode (green LED) and digital mode (red LED). In analogue mode, the x- and y-axis were controlled by the analogue controller movements, and the D-pad was used as a hat switch. In digital mode, the D-pad controlled the x- and y-axis like a traditional digital control pad (therefore, there was no hat switch function in digital mode).

Due to the release in 1998, at which time USB was just taking off, the Freestyle Pro supported both game port and USB connection. Without the adapter, the controller's cable ended in a game port plug. The sale box contained the Gameport-to-USB adapter for free.