(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you like to hunt MiGs from the cockpit of an F-16 while you're actually flying over Cincinnati in a Boeing 737, you know how frustrating it is to play games on a laptop computer. Even if your portable has plenty of horsepower, high-resolution graphics, and a stereo sound card, chasing bogeys with a keyboard doesn't cut it. The problem: Most laptops don't have joystick ports. Even if they did, you'd have trouble stuffing a joystick into your carrying bag.

Enter the Gravis Stinger, which bills itself as the first game controller designed for laptops. This bat-shaped gadget, which goes for $40, is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and weighs only a couple of ounces, so you can use it in a cramped airline seat. On top of the unit there's a directional game pad that fits under your thumb and rotates in all directions for true joystick control. You'll also find ten programmable buttons you can set up to fire guns and rockets, drop bombs, or control your throttle, rudder, and flaps.

The cool thing about the Stinger is that it doesn't require a joystick port. It connects to the serial port of your laptop--a nine-pin outlet on the back of the computer, normally used for an external mouse, digital camera, or some other device. I tried the Stinger on a Toshiba Satellite 330CDS, a solid, midrange portable ostensibly designed for boring stuff such as writing letters and recalculating spreadsheets.

Unfortunately, installing the Stinger took a lot of work. Like many of the games it's designed for, the controller requires an extension to the Windows 95/98 operating system called Microsoft DirectX 5. The Gravis installation program doesn't detect whether you have the DirectX 5 and offer to install it if you don't. So the Stinger wouldn't work until I figured out what was wrong and installed DirectX 5 manually.

That accomplished, the Stinger turned the Toshiba into a surprisingly agile game machine. The game pad takes some getting used to as a joystick replacement, but it's a lot better than pecking at letters on a keyboard. A control panel makes it easy to set up the Stinger's buttons to simulate the keystrokes that control most games.

The verdict? If you are willing to put up with a few installation hassles, this gadget will make it much easier for you to have a good time on the road. For more information, contact Gravis at 800-280-8318 or surf to www.gravis.com.

--Michael J. Himowitz