One genre of games I loved as a kid that's all but disappeared is the flight sim. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Freespace — the list goes on and on.

You can imagine, then, that Mad Catz is really tugging at my heart-strings here with its F.L.Y. 9 flightstick for the Xbox 360. Just seeing all those buttons up top makes me remember how much better it feels to launch a salvo of rockets with a joystick — it just feels better to fly a plane with a joystick instead of a controller. One thing we also really like? The F.L.Y. is entirely wireless. The 360 has a few fun sims for you to use the stick with, such as Crimson Skies, Tom Clancy's HAWX and IL-2 Sturmovik.

The F.L.Y. lands in spring for $100 which, while expensive, is around what something like Microsoft's old Sidewinder line of joysticks for the PC would have cost you.

Update: We've provided two more shots of the joystick, courtesy of Mad Catz.

Mad Catz, via Engadget