The steam version claims full controller support and that it works in big screen mode. This is supposed to mean you can play through an entire game with just a controller and won't need a mouse or keyboard at all. I got the gog version on sale but the 20th anniversary version only seems to work with a mouse in the menus and can't be paused without the keyboard. The 15th anniversary version accepts controller input in the menus but only with the analog stick which is overly sensitive.

I'm using a ps3 controller emulated to work as an Xbox 360 controller through motionjoy. It's worked perfectly for me with any game with controller support.

So is this the same as the steam version? Is there something I need to configure differently? Or is the steam version labeled incorrectly?

I don't have the Steam version, but my guess is yes. There are also some complaints about controllers not working as expected. Anyway, if you ask me, there's no need to play this game with a controller. It's very old, so the developer had mainly keyboard control in mind. It works perfectly fine and you can also remap the keys if you don't like the default layout.

Sounds like the OP wants to play on a couch or something, where a keyboard would be cumbersome. My advice would be to just program the pad, mapping keyboard keys to the buttons. There are basically only five keys: left, right, down (which will crouch and do some other context-sensitive things) up (which jumps and does some context-sensitive things) and the action key, which is held down to run and is also used for fighting. Map those to your dpad plus one button and you're good to go. Since it can be weird to use up to jump on a gamepad, you could even map it to a button instead if you like. Or map it to both!

Oh, I guess there are pause and menu buttons too, but you can map those too, since you'll have plenty of spare buttons on your pad. In fact, you might be able to just use the in-game joypad support for the actual game controls and just map the pause and menu buttons yourself.

if you don't have mapping software for your pad, there are free programs like Joy2Key and Xpadder that you can use (actually I think the new versions of Xpadder cost money but the older versions are available for free).

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I was interested in using my laptop and playing from my couch. For the 20th anniversary version I would just bind the keys to my controller but the menu requires mouse input. I think there some of the programs similar to xpadder may have a feature for that but I'll probably just use a remote keyboard with a touchpad and use a controller for the game.

It's just a bit frustrating since the steam version showed full controller support and I assumed that gog would have the same version of the game. I'm thinking I should have gotten it on steam or even ps3 which also has a soundtrack.

The game takes roughly 2.5 to 3 hours to complete. You can do this in one session, so you won't spend much time in the main menu. Even the pause option isn't very useful, as the game consists of rather short action sequences or gives you endless time to stand around. No need to pause. If your pad works this far, you're good to go and as said before, the remote keyboard will work perfectly fine as well. Considering its length, I wouldn't spend too much time on setting up a game pad, if you run into problems and I doubt that the Steam version is any different, no matter what they state in their description. Steam is not known for putting much effort in old games.

Yeah, a remote keyboard + pad would work fine, but it is possible to map the mouse onto one of your analog sticks. I've done it for something else, but I used my pad's native programming software. Not sure if XPadder or Joy2Key have that capability. The GOG version has the soundtrack too, I think. Check your extras download (extras are separate from the main game download) on your Account page. I have the 20th Anniversary Edition from GOG and it comes with HD Wallpapers, a dev diary, technical handbook, soundtrack in mp3 and FLAC, a "making of" video, and the earlier 15th Anniversary Edition release, for those who prefer that one. But I had to download these extras separately from the main game.

:O
I think it took me about 20 years to complete the game.

Seriously, it took me 2h 32m from first start-up to finishing the game. I keep some play time statistics ;-)

Tons of times. Now that you mention it, that could make the difference to the original version. My guess is, there are much more waypoints now, so it doesn't hurt much when you die - game wise.

I'm not that surprised, actually. Knowing the game as well as I do, I can beat it in about 20 minutes now. When I first played it, however, I was much younger and I got stuck a lot and often wandered around certain sections for a long while trying to figure out what to do. It took me many sessions and lots of messing around before I was able to finish it. If I played it for the first time today, I bet I'd get through it much quicker.

I think that's one reason why many people think the fans of this game are only fans due to nostalgia. I don't agree, but I do think that it's a different experience to play it today than it was then. Today it's easy to look up a solution, and even if you don't, we've played so many games in the years since that we have a better instinct for how to figure out Another World. At the time, though, the game was a strange, new thing, where we never knew what to expect from each new screen, and reaching each screen was a reward in and of itself. The constant deaths set the pacing, slowing things down so it felt like an epic adventure despite the fact that it can be finished in under a half hour once you know what to do.

I'm not sure it's possible to have that same experience today, even for someone who's never played it before. But I still think it's a really interesting piece of design.

Very interesting. I had never played the game when it was originally released but only when it came to GOG. Thanks for opening the nostalgic perspective. It's not the same today, but I can imagine now how it felt and I'd second that it is still a really interesting piece of design.