Having played emulated games on keyboard for so many years, I've come to the conclusion that my initial experiences with gaming were always nerfed due to a failure on the hardware makers side.
that's not to say I'm faultless and would no doubt be the real life The Wizard, Staring Fred Savage of gaming if they saw the better way of doing things. No body can get 50,000 points in Double Dragon that fast...
I'm just saying, some games that I grew up disliking would probably not be on my shitlist if the controllers had a different set up.
I recently got my hands on a leverless controller called the m16. After turning the distracting led lights under the buttons all the way off(very cool of the manufacturers to allow you to do this, btw) I went ahead and played a couple of SNES fighters just to test it out.
I can do Shoryuken on both sides with no problem. That alone proves that my gaming experience has been hindered by dpads this whole time.
I get the whole opposable thumb gimmick being a sign of evolution, and how that allows us to grip things and invent stuff...but when you just wanna move a character around in a video game, sliding your fat thumb across a piece of plastic is not really the best way of doing things.
It's really a situational thing. casually playing a platformer is fine for the dpad control scheme. I'm sure RPG's are okay as well, and you can get by with puzzle games using he same kind of controls.
I'm primarily an arcade gamer for the most part. Fighting games are my jam, and I ain't jelly over what other people like playing. I'm looking for precision when it comes to character movement. I wanna know that the combo that got dropped, or the missed input that cost me the round, came about because of user error and not a poor choice of hardware.
Funny thing is, I don't even like this kind of discussion. As a kid, I grew up assuming most third party controllers were ass unless they had a turbo function. Those were simpler times. If the third party pad let me rapid punch in Temco World Wrestling, then of course I thought it was the only controller that mattered.
I don't remember ever having an arcade stick..but falling in love with fighting games because of the SNES port of World Warrior, I wanted one ever since.
The only thing that scared me off from getting one is when I started looking it to buying, and learned about how there are different gates, different buttons...micro switches...a whole bunch of technical stuff that made certain sticks 'better' to some people. I don't wanna tinker around with this crap. I'm just trying to get something that will let me do cool shit in the game I like!
I have that, so I'm happy to enjoy some old games in a better way. First thing I noticed when playing is that I'm able to sit in my desk chair and learn back comfortably. It makes me feel like i'm on the couch as a kid, playing Super Nintendo and drinking Sunny D again.
Difference is that now I'm not losing to bullshit I know my counter would have neutralized had it came out, because the moves actually are coming out as planned now. Having a blast!