During my testing, it became obvious that Nascar Racing would really benefit from a steering wheel, and Tony Hawk absolutely screams for a gamepad. I had neither for my Mac. So I started experimenting ... those of you who do a lot of gaming on your Mac will probably not be surprised by the results. But if you're wondering about gaming peripheral compatibility in OS X, read the rest of this hint for my experiences...
I did have a force-feedback wheel for the PC, the Formula Force GP. On a lark, I plugged it into the Mac, and was amazed that it worked perfectly, force feedback and all, in Nascar Racing. When I visited the Logitech site, of course, it states quite clearly that this is expected under 10.2.3 or newer, as it's using the built-in HID Manager's force feedback support. Not having paid much attention to gaming on the Mac lately, I hadn't heard that Apple had built this into the OS.
Based on the experience with the wheel and my reading about the HID Manager, I went looking for a simple USB gamepad for Tony Hawk. Testing a few models at the local stores, the one that felt best in my hands was the Saitek P880 Dual Analog gamepad. It was only $19.99, and felt very solid and correctly shaped for my hands. But it had these two analog joysticks in addition to the digital pad ... and it had a huge, yellow warning sticker wrapped around the cable which read "You must install the Saitek drivers on your PC before plugging in this device!" There was no mention of Mac support on the box. I decided to take it home and try it, with the hope that at least the digital pad would work and I could just ignore the dual analog joysticks.
Much to my surprise (again!), not only did the digital pad and buttons work perfectly, but the analog joysticks are also fully supported in OS X (at least in Tony Hawk). I was able to configure the game to use either the pad or the joysticks (I found the pad much easier to use) with no problems at all.
The moral of the story is that, if you're looking for gaming peripherals, you may not have to focus on just those that claim "Mac compatible" on their boxes. Make sure you buy at a store that lets you easily return products, but if you find something you like, go ahead and try it -- if it conforms with the USB HID specification, it will more than likely work fine on your Mac.

