Simulating a Gameport in Windows XP

[Sulck]

I have just stumbled (googled) on to this forum while searching for a solution to a problem I am having. I don't really know if this is way beside the scope of this forum, but it seems like there might be someone around here that could help me anyway.

I recently took up playing some old DOS/Win95 games and to my surprise a lot of them actually work in Win XP without any special modifications. I have one big problem however - since this was before USB, these games will only accept gamepad inputs from an old fashioned gameport which as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) Win XP has never even heard of.

Does anybody know if there is a way to trick these games into accepting a USB gamepad as gameport input? Do I need some kind of general DOS emulator or something to do this or what?
I have no knowledge about these things at all, so please don't get too technical on me. I really just want to know if this is doable. The specific game I am most interested in getting to work is WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, which was a DOS game that ran under Win95.

Any pointers, suggestions or just links to relevant threads would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
- Sulck

[Minwah]

If you have a gameport, it should work under XP.  I interfaced an arcade joystick to a gameport and had that working under XP.

However, whether DOS games will recognise the gameport as they would in real DOS I am not entirely sure.  If not, then perhaps with the help of something like DOSBox it might (?): http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

[Sulck]

OK, thank you, I guess it's just my computer manufacturer that was lazy and didnt bother to give me a gameport.
But I'm glad it's still supported. It means if all else fails then I could just get one on a PCI card and plug in and that should work... right?

As for DOSBox, I don't know whether to expect a gameport emulation feature, but I will ask around on the appropriate forum. Still if anyone here has some knowledge, please share.

[JustMichael]

Sulck, do you have a sound card?  These usually have a gameport on them.

[Random24]

Has everybody forgotten about joytokey?

If the DOS game allowed for keyboard control then this should help you.  It allows you to map a USB controller to keyboard commands.  It is a bit hard to find but you should try here.

[Howard_Casto]

I hadn't forgotten about it, but it usually doesn't work well in dos, which is why I didn't mention it. 

There is also the virtual joystick in ppjoy, but I don't think it'll work well either.

[Sulck]

I only have an onboard sound chip, no gameport.
I will try that joy2key thing. Would be nice since that would actually support more than 4 buttons on the gamepad.

UPDATE: JoyToKey worked like a charm, at least in WrestleMania. Thank you guys, I am 10 again.