joystick

The directional and other controls on a conventional joystick may be translated to a joy pad, which enables all controls to be activated by buttons.

In computing, an input device that signals to a computer the direction and extent of displacement of a hand-held lever. It is similar to the joystick used to control the flight of an aircraft.

Joysticks are sometimes used to control the movement of a cursor (marker) across a display screen, but are much more frequently used to provide fast and direct input for moving the characters and symbols that feature in computer games. Unlike a mouse, which can move a pointer in any direction, simple games joysticks are often capable only of moving an object in one of eight different directions. Today, many joysticks and control pads feature some form of force feedback.