You’d miss him if you weren’t looking; then again that’s how it’s been for Inverted Y-Axis, the notorious control scheme relegated to the depths of option menus for the past decade.

“I’m thin because I have a weight problem. It’s hard not to when everyone hates the way you look,” says Inverted Y-Axis, groveling over a cup of hot green tea in the den of his Baton Rouge summer ranch. “Er, how you look. How you look up when you should look down, down when you should look up. Drat, even my jokes are misguided.”

Time has been hard for Inverted Y-Axis who’d skyrocketed to fame with the advent of flight sims and shooters like Descent, but has since fallen from such heights, now clutching for relevancy in a market full of newer, sexier control schemes.

“They say soon people won’t even need the Y-Axis all together,” mumbles Inverted, his tone crescendoing, “Well that’s a bunch of hogwash. The Y-Axis is one of the two most important Axes of today. If not ever.”

Inverted Y-Axis looks older under the Louisiana sun. Maybe it’s his chain-smoking habit or maybe it’s the stress of fame, but his eyes droop and his teeth chatter if he doesn’t mind them. We wait for a bus to take him to visit his grandchildren, Left and Right Trigger.

“Sometimes I think about the good old days,” he says. “I miss flying.”