I am running Workbench 3.1 and boots from HDD. What I would like to do is that when the Amiga is switched on, before Workbench loads, an option with a timer (for example 5 seconds) appears.

If the user presses Joystick player 1 button during these 5 seconds, Workbench doesn't load, instead TinyLauncher command runs (situated in Dh0:c). TinyLauncher is a really good Whdload menu frontend. Once it launches and the user plays a game, and quits, TinyLauncher has to be run again.

If during the 5 second countdown, joystick is not pressed, the system proceeds to load WB3.1 as usual.

Can be done? =)

You could download Bootman from Aminet. You could make your own startup-scripts and has a timer to boot from your default startup script.

you might want to try the same with the mouse with 1TouchMac25 from Aminet.

Description:

It's a simple program that allow you to boot from differents Startup-sequence
files by Pressing the left, the right or the middle mouse button (a different
file will be executed depending on witch button you've pressed).

check here http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/1TouchMac25

Is there something similar but waits for a joystick rather than a mouse click?

I think the CD32 stuff I mentioned checks joysticks, but it's been a while since I looked at it.