I used joys only for playing on 8-bit Atari. Later I played PC games using <-^-> most of the time.

Honestly it depends on the price differential - if you can find a reasonable importer (I don't know if possible), the price in the States for the Logitech is 1/4th of what you're paying. If including shipping you can get it for half of what you're paying, I would say screw it and get it imported. The Logitech is pretty solid and any of the sticks even without warranty if you can get it for half that price is still a better deal since you can still buy a second or different one and probably come out no further behind.

Or vacation in the States and bring a joystick back with you. Almost worth it. ;P
Eh ... while everyone's experiences were different, the 90's (when the games the OP want s to play are from) were the heyday of joysticks and flight/space sims - maybe not HOTAS, force-feedback joysticks, but simple, standard joysticks used to be a lot more common.

WTF, how MUCH? It's less than $70 here...

EDIT:
And I agree with crazy_dave. You can buy new T16K from US for $50. Sure they will add some for shipping and there's is a risk you will have to pay custom's duty. But if that's 50% of the price I would gamble. Again – T16K doesn’t use potentiometers – what else can be broken in joy? Sure you can suffer from some mechanical damage, but I guess that's not covered by warranty,

Oops, how convenient. My dumb. Shipping sounds like your best bet, good luck.

Also, if cost + shipping goes over $50, then there are HUGE taxes, that would completely kill the deal. I'll check out ebay, but I think it's much more convenient to just get either the Saitek or the Thrustmaster.

Maybe it's the lack of sleep making me emotional, but you really are getting screwed by those prices in your home country. I'm actually angry even though I'm not being affected. That's beyond price gouging! I recognize it's not for a necessity like food or clothing, etc, but for a gaming device, but even so ... I don't know how they can charge that much in a market like Brazil and still sell enough to make a profit. I understand shipping costs even for importers must be high for Brazil so I understand the costs would be higher, but again ... wow, just wow. I'm sorry. :/

High import taxes are a huge issue for us. Anything imported costs a lot more than they do in their country of origin.

Because of that, a LOT of cheap electronics come through smuggling from Paraguay (and most people don't care at all, as the government already squeezes us too much). Few people look for joysticks, however, so they're hard to find from there. In the end, there's not a lot of choice.

Also, that's the reason digital distribution is pulling a lot of people out of pirating games. There's no comparison between store pricing and Steam sales.

Check out the description for this joystick if you want to have some laughs:

http://www.dinodirect.com/joystick-controller-220mm-flight-rocker-btp-c318.html

I particularly like this line:

"Made of high quality environmental material, this wired controller will not do harm to your healthy".

I guess I'd understand if they were trying to protect a fledging Brazilian industry (not ... necessarily agree with, but at least understand) - one reason I think FoxConn and Apple are building a new iPad factory in Brazil is to get around the import taxes to sell to the emerging Brazilian market. However as far as I know, there are no Brazilian joystick manufacturers ... so why bother with such a high import tax?

I'm a fairly liberal guy and I'm all for progressive taxes and the like, but import sales taxes are decidedly not progressive and if they target everything with huge import taxes, all they do is price items not available in your own country out of the reach of the common people which means they can't buy it anyway and/or encourage black market deals - which mean you see zero taxes anyway. Ack ...

Sorry I don't mean to derail the thread about economics. :/

No problem, we can talk all we want until someone with more advice comes along. Specifically, I was hoping someone might have something to say about the precision on that Thrustmaster Stick X.

Well, there *are* brazillian joystick brands, but they're all low quality and manufactured in China... So, yeah, taxes are mostly useless in this and many other cases. There was a movement some time ago to put games in a special "culture" category, which has lower rates, but it either didn't work, or is stuck in the myriad of laws to be still voted.

Well, there are reasons we're so underdeveloped.

In another front, we do have some pretty good consumer laws. If I buy a joystick through the internet, I actually have a week to test it, and return it if I don't like it, and I don't even have to pay the return shipping. I think I'm going to do that with the Thrustmaster if I can't find anyone to tell me more details.

Ah well ... I guess you win some, you lose some. :) (Side note: Like everything else, I'm pretty sure even the higher quality US brands are all manufactured in China too)

What really isn't, nowadays?

But good brands require better quality from the manufacturer. The brazillian brands prefer to keep them cheaper. You can guess how precise and durable their joysticks turn out to be...

Well with some effort you can find local companies operating on markets where 99% of products is manufactured in China. Two examples from Poland: we have a company called Wilk Electronics that actually assembles memory modules (DDR, Flash etc) in their own factory in Poland and sell under their proprietary name GOODRAM. Sure they don’t PRODUCE those modules just assemble them – but it’s still better than plain importing ready-to-sell products. Second example – I was quite surprised when I found a polish company that manufactures universal remotes for TV/DVD etc. It seems to that they design them but I can’t say how much of this ‘production’ sits really in Poland. But again – it’s better than plain import.

We've had a lot of threads on these and a lot of folks still come out in favor of the durability and awesomeness of the MS Sidewinder Pro, if you can still find one...