So the Collector's CD version of TIE Fighter is generally considered the superior one. It has essentially all the advantages of both the '94 DOS version and the '98 Windows version. But, if you've tried to play it with a modern joystick, you may have noticed it simply refuses to calibrate your joystick correctly, and sometimes will ignore all input from your stick in order to do whatever it takes into its little scripted head it should, usually for me a hard dive and left yaw, forever.

Thankfully, there is a solution. This was noticed back when the game first came out, although then it only affected a few joysticks - to quote the readme of the patch that fixed it, 'when using the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro, the Suncom Raptor, or other joysticks which may incorporate controls using axes from joystick 2.' Said patch is - thankfully - still available a quarter-century later thanks to archive.org. Download this zip and extract the .exe file to your TIE Fighter folder. Say yes when it asks if you want to overwrite, then fire up the game and prepare to destroy the Rebel Scum with the power of your full armed and functional joystick!

My thanks to the people on the XWVM discord, who very patiently tried to help me for most of a day, before someone remembered this patch.

made my day!

This is the only thing which made my Xbox controller work. Thanks a lot for this!