Hi Ken, I have been looking into this for a while, very difficult to get but I found a board from Adafruit
http://www.adafruit.com/products/731 that should work. I was going to try it but haven't got a lot of time at the moment. I still have to complete my observatory first though.
Anyway it has Joystick capability with 32 button inputs, 6 axis joystick control and a hat button (Whatever that is). I was going to change the layout different from a game-pad to something like a small mixer control board with slider controls instead of joysticks.
Anyway if you can do something with it then by all means go for it. I have to get my priorities right and it will have to wait.