I'm playing it with an Xbox controller, works like a charm without any tweaking.

I have a wired one with the microsoft gamepad software intalled and it works with other games fine. How do you play this one with it? Option somewhere?

If it's run through DosBox, you could map keyboard keys to your joystick buttons.
In DosBox, press control+F1 to open the keymapper utility. In there, you can map the arrow keys to your gamepad's d-pad for instance, and the control (jump) and alt (shoot) buttons to whatever gamepad button you want.
First, click the keyboard button you want to map. Then click the 'Add' button at the bottom, and then press the button on the gamepad that you want to use for that action. Do that for all the game buttons, and then press 'Save'.

I'm not entirely sure if it caries over between game launches, and if it's a game-specific setting or if the mapping is for all Dosbox-run games, but it should work this way.
If Dosbox does forget the settings between launches, you'll have to set the 'mapperfile' setting in the Dosbox config file to the stored map file.

I hope I'm making sense >_>

Mmmh. I didn't have to do any of this myself - it even surprised me actually. I just activated the joystick in the in-game options menu, and was good to go. The A & B buttons of the pad were binded to Jump & Shoot respectively, and the left analog stick was recognized as the joystick.

Not a bad game at all. I missed this one when it came out back in the day.

Scrolling and movement are a bit choppy, and there's an unfair tendency for enemies to spawn directly on top of you, but overall a pretty good game.

I was surprised how good this actually is. I played a lot of apogee platformers but this one is probably the best. Great level design, nice music and graphics, solid controls, Difficulty is spot on (in contrary to duke nukem II ). Only small downside is that in a couple of levels you can go into a direction that blocks you from going back and if you didn't have everything by then it's impossible to finishe the level ( but that happens in very few levels).

Playing this for the first time and I love it. Yeah, it's a bit generic and unfair sometimes (What is it with Apogee and unavoidable spikes! :P) but..

I dunno, it's just great fun. It reminds me of side-scrolling DOOM or Gauntlet, weirdly. Maybe it's the maze-like levels, hoards of enemies, keys etc.

It's just one of those strange ones that doesn't at first seem that great and shouldn't be, by rights. It just is, though. You just have to play it to know. That potion that powers up your magic bolts - Awesome. So satisfying! Anybody else think of this game as more of a shoot-em-up in a maze than a platformer?

I had the same positive experience as Eric Zann. My game pad worked perfectly after I told Hocus Pocus to use a 'joystick' instead of the keyboard. I can shoot upward while pointing the direction key upward (away from me). Lacking other games of this quality I play through all levels of the three Hocus Pocus games repeatedly, attempting to beet the spped targets to gain bonus points.

If you like Hocus Pocus you will like the excellent free EPIC game 'XARGON' from another source. I was unable to buy parts 2 and 3 or XARGON because of a virus threat. It would be nice if GOG added the XARGON trilogy to their catalog.

I used to love playing LOST VIKINGS on a Nintendo machine. Somebody has written a gloomy screen version of LOST VIKINGS for PC but using my game pad I can't switch quickly between the three characters so it does not suit me.

I would dearly like to buy more 2D maze games like Hocus Pocus with bright colorful scenery and quick movement but I can't find any..