iM 4,1-14,4 Will an old usb joystick work?

[pkw]

I want to purchase a joystick to play old 8-bit games in an emulator on my iMac 2013, will something like MS Sidewinder that I found on eBay work ok?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Based on some quick Googling it sounds like it doesn't work out of the box, but USB Overdrive can make it work: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2037379

I'm a little surprised that drivers are needed, I would have assumed old MS joysticksk just use DirectInput which (I thought) was supported on macOS, although individual software support is hit and miss (but you can use https://yukkurigames.com/enjoyable/).