A tribute to the legendary ’90s PC flight stick

When I look back at the world of gaming peripherals, it seems we’ve come a long way from those stiff, unforgiving sticks of the nineties. Growing up, good joysticks were an elusive treasure. The arcade cabinets were equipped with sticks so worn down they required smashing to register an input, making the experience feel less like play and more like wrestling with cheap plastic.

Even the revolution ushered in by the Nintendo 64’s analogue stick felt like a miracle at first—responsive and granular. But that initial marvel quickly faded as I destroyed countless controllers. The only stick that truly held up was a nondescript beige and black accessory my dad brought home, likely a hand-me-down from one of his computer geeks.

This unassuming peripheral turned out to be a time machine. When I first picked it up and used it to boot up games like LHX Attack Chopper, I felt less like a gamer and more like a pilot. It was simple—just the trigger and a small red button for missiles. The branding was minimalist: it simply read “FlightStick.”

I had no idea that this humble item belonged to a decades-spanning lineage until I dug into the very first issues of PC Gamer US in 1994 and found an advertisement for it. There it was, bottom right! That was my stick.

The company behind the stick, CH Products, was a family business dating back to the 1970s. Their simpler designs and connectivity options seemed to fall out of favor as competitors like Thrustmaster, Saitek, and Logitech introduced more complex HOTAS setups in the 2000s. Yet, even today, searching for them reveals that flight enthusiasts still praise CH Products‘ rock-solid build quality, noting that they don’t BREAK for anything!

The original FlightStick model actually debuted in 1987. At the time, with flight simulators booming on PC, this peripheral was considered an incredibly realistic analog joystick, flying circles around the console and arcade sticks of the era.

While some enthusiasts still seek out the vintage gear—like Andy Chalk’s legendary FlightStick Pro—the journey from those early peripherals to today’s high-tech controllers is fascinating. Thirty years ago, this simple stick offered a level of realism that, while quaint by modern standards, set an incredibly high bar for analog input.