The Thrustmaster X-Fighter is a gameport joystick designed to bring a military-combat look and feel to PC gaming. Released in the late 1990s and targeted at flight sim and action gamers, it stands about 10 inches tall on a 7.75-inch square base, all in matte black with red buttons. The yoke is a massive, realistic-looking handle with a four-position hat switch, a trigger, and four face buttons. Inside, heavy-gauge plastic and nylon parts are mounted to a metal base plate, giving the unit a substantial heft. The stick uses a pincer linkage with strong springs to deliver high yoke tension, a deliberate design choice that some will love and others will find tiring. Installation is dead simple: plug the 15-pin connector into a gameport, secure the screws, and Windows 95 recognizes it without extra drivers. No bundled software is included. At $59.95, the X-Fighter positioned itself as a durable, no-nonsense peripheral for gamers who wanted something that felt like it belonged in a cockpit rather than on a toy shelf.