Some older games have issues with the newest mice, particularly with USB polling rates and "Hey! The cursor scrolls faster horizontally than it does vertically!" and stuff like that. Laser and optical mice can be tricky in this situation, and that's when I turn to my trusty trackball (I've raised it from a 9-pin, thanks to Mr. Mysza). I imagine there are easier ways to get that 'analog' quality precision, but I haven't heard of them. That's why I'm asking. Are there any mice or other input devices that are readily available (i.e. non-vintage stuff that we won't have to drop a bundle on) that are readily compatible with the earliest GOG games? Are there any good programs that alter the way the newest input devices function with the oldest games, near enough to being a real 20-year old mouse?

They use gnomes, not mice.

Hamsters...

No, there Gerbils

They're :P

That, and moles are useful for spying on the competition :D

Optical mice is still the best option, provided you change the settings before you launch the game, everytime, if the mouse is too quick / slow etc

Not surprisingly, the porcupine experiment didn't last long.

I haven't heard of, or experienced, any troubles with mice on the older games, either. Interesting...

I'm not so sure that's a mouse issue... I've encountered it before but it's always been because it's a game designed in a non-square pixel resolution (320x200, 640x400). The cursor moves slower vertically because the image is meant to be vertically stretched. That is to say that the cursor is moving at the correct speed, but because the image is squashed it appears to travel slower.

Changing aspect=false to aspect=true in the DOSBox configuration fixes this.

Worms United is a good example of a game with this issue.

Are you using a widescreen monitor and "stretching" a 4:3 resolution game to 16:9/10 fullscreen?

The opposite. Sort of. I use a widescreen monitor, but I scale games to their 'native' ratios when appropriate, using the "GPU Scaling" function in CCC.

SPACE Hamsters

Miniture versions of the giant ones to be exact.

Meh, I'm not very familiar with Catalyst... Maybe someone can help you on that front.
However, if you have an option on your widescreen monitor that allows you to rescale to 4:3 (with big black borders on the sides), the mouse speeds should come back to normal.

It's how I always played SC1 and SuddenAttack, both 4:3 games requiring pretty accurate mouse control, on widescreens, without puking at the internet cafe owner.

Sometimes it's newer games like Aquanox or even Prey. Or Allegro games. The first two have 'X-axis sensitivity' adjustment controls, though, and Prey's most recent patches provides for adjusting for mouse input latency and such. But like I said before, if I'm ever in doubt, I switch to analog.