Many of the 80ies micro computers had dedicated connectors for joystick controllers, but unfortunately the Oric were not one of these.

As a result, joystick interfaces appeared on the market as accessories you could buy, but unfortunately they had all to be programmed differently, and as a result most games don't support any joystick interface, or only some very specific models.

When people decide to make a game on the Oric, on of the first issue they stumble upon is how to deal with keyboard input.

There are many different ways, some are simple but only allow to check for one key at a time, while some other allow to test for multiple key presses.