[piano-laden jazz tunes]
[computer buzzes, beeps] - Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware, where we're taking a look at hardware and software that is odd,
forgotten, and obsolete! Like the KeyStik & Garage
that we have right here. And yeah, it is a little joystick... [little joystick noises] that clips onto your keyboard, like this. And there you go. [KeyStik rattles] Now you have a joystick for your keyboard. No more having to press
the keys like a caveman. Let's take a look at
this bit of weirdness. All right, so let us dive
into this thing, finally. Something I've been
wanting to do for years ever since I first learned about them. This is the KeyStik & Garage,
apparently. "Clip on 'n' play!" Yeah, it clips onto your cursor keys, and is fully compatible
with any standard keyboard, no batteries or gameport required. Ooh, how impressive. And this delightful thing
comes to us from Plawa or I guess "Plava," short for Plawa-Feinwerktechnik, which is a German company. I guess that equates to roughly
Plava Precision Engineering. They made a lot of things, but this being one of them and certainly, the most
interesting thing of theirs I've come across, at least for Oddware potential so far. Yeah, "clip on and play KeyStik & Garage." So you've got like this
monitor holster kind of deal, which is just wonderful. And then, of course, the KeyStik itself, which, yeah, it's literally a joystick
that clips onto your keyboard. Goes over the arrow keys and lets you use the arrow
keys as a joystick of sorts with an ergonomic design, sweat reduction surface, automatic centering, and no trimming. How fancy. Look at all these other
selling points there. Software control becomes child's play. Great for games, CAD, spread-sheets. It's much faster than the cursor keys. Support diagonal movements of the cursor. No installation software necessary. Yeah, cuz it's a piece of plastic! And yeah, this one in particular actually comes to us from Portugal. You can see the import sticker there. Thanks to LGR viewer David of the YouTube channel Deckard Games for sending this over from there. And yeah, he actually sent me
a little note as well saying some of his memories about it.
And according to him, this was purchased in the mid to late 90s around when the Pentium II was new. And they were sold in Portugal
and were somewhat popular, especially for fighting
and football games. He says he clearly remembers
a transparent model being the popular one, and there were numerous
models that they could find in almost every computer shop back then. And yeah, that kind of
matches up pretty well with what I've seen. What little I've seen, I haven't actually come across a whole bunch of information about these except that they were a thing and somewhat popular back in the day because they weren't terribly expensive. In fact, this one right
here, or one very close to it was also sold for around
$13 in 1999, year 2000 or so with KeyStik spelled with a 'C'
in the word 'Stick' in the name. So yay, upgrade. There were also versions
like the LogiStik. Pretty much the same thing, just slightly different packaging, as well as the Fun Key Stick.
The "Funky Stick." Yeah, I see what they
were going for there, but anyway, all the same basic design just distributed slightly
differently at different retailers in different countries
and such around the world, but yeah, I've just been
looking for one of these things for years. Ever since seeing this picture, I don't even know how long ago, maybe even before starting LGR, just the Cursor Stick I
believe is what it was called. I have no idea who made it. It might be the transparent one
that David was referring to, but yeah, there's only
a couple of pictures that I've found floating around. Never actually found one though. I've also seen the Mini Stick about 10, 12, 15 years ago, whatever. It was another one of these
little clip-on joystick things. It goes over the arrow keys,
different design though. And there's also the Japonika Numpad and NES Joystick, adhesive joysticks. So yeah, this one right here clips onto your computer's numpad instead of the arrow keys. But it doesn't actually clip on it, just it has an adhesive and it just sort of sticks onto the keys. Same with the NES version. It just stick that
straight onto the D-pad. I've actually done a video about these over on my LGR Blerbs channels. So check that out if you would like to see this
bit of silliness in action. It's kinda terrible. It kinda works though,
but not really. I always thought that these
would be more substantial, maybe working a little better. You'd hope so. 'Cause it's not actually like
sticking straight to the keys, it just sort of lays on top of it. And there's also 3D printed things today, like the JoyKey design that you can find and 3D print yourself, which seems to be more
similar to the Japonika thing, it just is a stick that
sticks to your keyboard keys. But yeah, this right here? Eh you know, slightly more substantial. So I really do look forward
to seeing if this works. So right here we have the Garage portion. It's just like a monitor holster. Yeah, used to see these
for computer microphones and even mice and such. I guess, oh yeah, there
would've been some adhesive and little stickers. Oh yeah. A note [laughs] real quick from David. "Here's the thing." Yes. The thing is here. And there we go. So it's just a little box [joystick squeaking] with a little skreaky
joystick on top there. It feels more 'skreaky'
than squeaky, I don't know. It's like plastic on plastic. Doesn't feel particularly great, but hey, whatever. Got "Plawa, Germany,
patent pending." [chuckles] So it does have some
little sticker deals there. So I guess it does adhere to the keyboard, but not actually to the keys. You know, this right here, this actually adhered
to the keys themselves, which created a problem on
like a Model M for instance with detachable key caps
on top of the keycaps. But yeah, it's just, look at that. Pokes down... depending on which way
you're moving the joystick. I don't know, like it seems
like it should work pretty well. [laughs] I have to add some sort
of lubrication maybe. That plastic sound is silly. Actually, huh, look at that. So it actually says Cursor Stick, KeyStik, and LogiStik all in there. So I guess a lot of
those were similar enough to just include the same constructions. -"Constructions.
-Constructions?! [laughs] Constructions, who says that? Instructions, ya doof! And we have English here, USA,
Great Britain, and Australia. Look at all these countries though. All these different languages. [international laugh] Wow. Okay. Anyway, instructions, simple enough. Put the things in there
and sticky parts there, and smack it down there and there you go. What is this? We have an adjuster. I'm not entirely sure what
that's saying to do there. So let's read. We would like to thank you for deciding to purchase
our innovative Cursor Stick, LogiStik, KeyStik and wish
you hours -- "your" hours, of fun and enjoyments. Mm, this is wonderful already. To assemble it. Let's see. Adhesive discs, remove the foil, place the two discs between
each magnet and metal plate. So there's magnets in here? [instrumental jazz music] Now you have to adjust
the white or yellow nuts with the red tool by
rotating the nuts up or down. To ensure precise operation of the stick, the nuts must rest on the keys. Yeah, you make sure your
nuts are always on your keys. Cool. Maybe this comes apart. I don't wanna break it though. This plastic feels terrible. Okay, there we go. Okay. Wow. So this actually does look very much like the transparent version
if you look at it like this. [joystick squeaks] [laughs] It is definitely magnetic though.
[screwdriver tapping] [lubed joystick moves around]
All right, so it's back together, with a little bit of lubrication. Less squeaky. That's nice. And yeah, figured out what it
meant by doing adjustments. Yeah, each of the little
feet, the hexagons, they actually spin a little bit. So clockwise to tighten, make them go in. And then counterclockwise
to make them come out a bit. So there's little adjustment feet. So you adjust each one
of these individually. There's not one adjustment. So I guess there would've originally been a little hex head thing
to make that happen. And yeah, you just get those matched up so that it's just barely
resting on the arrow keys. And yeah, that makes sense. I was wondering about that, cuz there are different heights for keycaps and keys in general. So yeah, let's go ahead
and get this adjusted and stuck onto a keyboard
and we'll test it out. [jazz music fades] All righty, time to get
this installation going, which just involves... that. And a bit of an adhesive. I'm just gonna use some
of this double-sided, sticky mounting stuff
since it works quite well. But yeah, you can see here hopefully, I did some adjustments to the nuts, and yeah, those just screw out a bit because I wanted to match
the height of the key caps. And I'm actually gonna be
using this NEC keyboard, an APC-H412, which has shallower, shorter keys as opposed to something
like an IBM Model M that I would normally use. I mean, look how tall those keys are. In fact it's actually too
tall to even fit inside, like there, you see how much
the gray plastic, the height? It just kind of floats on top, even with the nuts all the way screwed in, but yeah, these? Got it adjusted, so. [joystick rattling] [laughs] It's really cool feeling. Anyway let's go ahead and
get this adhered to there. Nice. As for the holster, I guess I'm just gonna put it here. I mean, we don't really need it. We should install it. How often do they think you're gonna be taking that off of there to put it on the side of your monitor? But there it is. I mean, I guess you could also use it just as a mouse holder, right? I mean this kind of thing
was a thing back in the day, but anyway. All right, let's get
this computer turned on and try out our KeyStik. [keyboard clicking] Mm, always in such a reflective mood when I use this lovely
Compaq Presario 425. So yeah, we have the joystick
or the KeyStik... plugged in, just wanna get some text here. And it's definitely working
pretty much as it should. The left and right feels
a little bit wonkier than the up and down. Up and down feels nice, but... I did some adjusting to see if I could get it any better. This is about as good as I can get it, at least on this keyboard. [laughs] I really do doubt the claim though that it is "much faster
than the cursor keys." I'm gonna say no, but whatever. Let's try it out. So a platformer seems
like an obvious choice. And let's go for this. Because, of course,
Commander Keen, episode four. [PC speaker sounds] [laughs] That is immediately, oddly
satisfying, I gotta say. Dude. This is awesome. [laughs] This is really cool. All right. Ah, I keep accidentally
pressing the space bar. I'm not used to Control and
Alt being so small on this, or close together. This is just such a long
space bar in this keyboard. It's like the longest space bar. I mean, look at that thing! Okay, so that worked very well. I wanna try out a flight --
Oops, flight simulator of sorts. And we're gonna go with LHX because it is a personal favorite. And while it does allow you
to play with the keyboard, the way that the keyboard
works in this game is, well, I don't think it's gonna
work very well with this. [laughs] So yeah, you like, you
move it around in steps and you can't hold it down. So it kind of defeats the purpose. That being said though, this already does feel slightly
more natural, so to speak. [PC speaker, keyboard noises] Actually, yeah, this is pretty cool. I like it better than just the arrow keys. I don't know. Maybe it's just the mental difference of having like an actual little joystick to fondle down here that
makes it feel a little better. Yeah, that's actually pretty cool. I mean, sure, you have to do it in steps, but... I will destroy you.
[rapid space bar tapping] [laughs] Complete overkill. Oh, that Hind is down. So let's move over to another flight sim that if I recall, should work just fine. Even better. "No joystick found." Well, that -- it does not
know our secret power. So yeah, with this one, you can actually hold, and you can see there, I'm
just moving the rudder. Yeah. And then up and down. Takes a second to kick in cuz, you know, it is
still a keyboard after all, but... And you can move it in steps,
of course, if you still... Whoops. If you still want to, but yeah, ideally, this should actually make a little more sense. So let's get up to speed
here in our little Cessna. Meigs Field, rest in peace. There we go. You can just hold it down, whereas you couldn't do that in LHX. It's just that delay,
you know, getting back once, you know, you have
the keyboard buffer, just the auto repeat kicking
in takes a second or two. Although I guess if you were to go in like the BIOS of your computer and just completely reduce that down, or you know, whatever way
that you have in your computer to change the repeat rate and how fast the repeating
of keys kicks in... then you could make that
pretty instantaneous. [mimics airplane noises] Okay, whoop, well, there goes that. Tried to correct, but it
took too long to do so. Well, so just go ahead. [game screeching] Such a painful noise. Pretty darn cool, I
gotta say, for this thing just being as simple as it is. It's really effective, especially in a flight sim like that. You know, it would just help to change the keyboard repeat rate, how quick it starts repeating characters in order for it to work holding it down. All right, so let us go
with a fighting game. I mean, that's another
obvious choice, right? So I got One Must Fall 2097 here. I'm gonna go with, let's go with Steffan. And let's get a bunch of random colors. Nice. So let's see how this works. Oops. [laughs] And immediately got hit, okay. Mm, combos. I'm so used -- There we go. I'm so used to playing
this with a keyboard, but that actually wasn't that bad. Oh, dude. See, look at this. Ah, I still got smashed with --
daggone it, no! Angel! Let's see if I can... Oh yeah. I'm jumping more than I want to because I'm trying to
go over here directly, but it's pressing the up and right or left a little too easy, but maybe that, you know,
that can be from the angle or like the... These are very lightweight keys, like you barely press 'em and it's very easy to press them down. It's one reason I was wanting
to try it on a Model M because those are much heavier keys. Maybe if I change my -- Whoa. Change my stance here a bit. It's interesting. Oh, look at that. [laughs] Pulling off moves. There we go. All right, well, obviously, cuz I've played it with
a keyboard for decades, but uh... yeah, it would not be my
ideal controller for this. [laughs] All right, one more, because David mentioned this. Playing it with some football games. So we're gonna play some
Sensible World of Soccer. Which I don't believe
I've ever played on DOS only on the Amiga,
so I don't know how it controls. Eh, guess we'll see. Let's just play a match. Iceland versus Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah. Delightful little pixel people. Okay, let us see if I can figure this out. Okay, well, oh my goodness. Oh boy. Is this supposed to go this fast? [laughs] Oh-ho-ho. What in the world.
Ahh! This doesn't seem right at all. Yeah, I'm gonna blame it on the speed. Look at that crap. Yeah, I'm totally not
seeing any speed options. [laughs]
Well. All right, let us try this
again with a muddy field. Maybe that'll slow people down. Oh my word.
Ahh! It's so fast. Oh this is madness. Get the ball. [laughs]
[keyboard clicking in vain] Ehh, look at this crap,
look at this crap! Look at -- oh my goodness, was that an own goal? Did they do it? I couldn't even tell. It's ridiculous. What is this? I don't know. [laughs] Whatever. Well, I will say that this thing may just be the key to joy in my life. This is lovely. [laughs] Honestly works even better than I was hoping that it would. I don't know. Like it reminds me almost
of like one of those, I forget even what they're called, but like the little tiny
joysticks that you got for certain old computers. I've used some on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrums and such, or maybe by like Epyx
and different companies. I'll put up the name of exactly what I'm thinking of on screen, but yeah, it kind of reminds me of that. It's like this little joystick. It's not bad at all. As long as you get it
set to the right keys, and y'know, it might help
if you had slightly heavier keys than this, but this isn't bad at all. Really isn't. [laughs] I really like this. I can see why they were popular, especially if they cost like
13 bucks or the equivalent. Yeah, thanks again to
David for sending this in, cuz yeah, I've just been
looking to cover one of these for so long. There he is.
Oh, good old friend. [laughs] This is really neat. Oh, what in the world? It actually doesn't suck. Yeah, you know, I really
do enjoy this a lot more than I thought I would. I mean, it's such a silly idea, but it works relatively
darned well in practice, I don't know. I mean, it's really not faster
or more accurate necessarily, but in terms of what they were going for in trying to provide almost
arcade like or game controller, handheld joystick situation on a peripheral that you
already have with your computer, just the keyboard, especially one that's mechanical. I mean, it works really well. And just the fact of having
the stick on there at all does a really effective job at making it feel like a nice
purpose-built peripheral, I don't know. Maybe it's just also
because I've used these and know how bad they are. Again, see my Blerbs
video if you wanna see, well, the idea that's
not quite fully baked. This on the other hand
is just really neat, and I hope that you enjoyed
taking a look at it with me. [jazz intensifies] And do check out my
other episodes of Oddware if you like this type of thing, or stick around for new videos, always in the works here on LGR. And as always, thanks for watching!
