[bluedino]

Parallel ports were very popular for connecting joysticks to MAME cabinets

The Covox speech thing was a nice hack as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

[kotaKat]

And homebrew SNES controller adapters! Good ol' "SNES controller on lpt1" in zsnes got me many hours of emulation fun back in the day.

https://www.raphnet.net/electronique/snes_adaptor/images/sne...

[bluedino]

I remember learning about this by some company that made DOS shareware clones of PacMan and Galaga but can't remember the name. Ring a bell?

[bluedino]

I found it - ChampSoftware and the ChampCable

[mobilio]

and ModPlay: https://awe.com/mark/dev/modplay.html

Amazing software for that time.