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[Malreyn]

YES!....This thing I had as a kid, wasn't even a BALL at all...it was some sort of half dome that didnt' roll...you had to press on the dome in direction you wanted to go in. It was clearly designed as if it was meant for people that could play it with your feet, but it was not advertised as such. It sucked for playing Contra or Ninja Gaiden where precise jumping was needed.

 

[Steel]

The DUKE

You know, I hated the duke at first, but it kinda grew on me. Fits pretty well in big hands.

 

[jelly]

The Duke was obscene, black and white buttons had annoying placement, same with S but it still felt great to hold and play with. Too large though and that orb in the middle, so awful looking at it now.

I hate the DS3, the convex nubs, what triggers, start button, cramp. I know people are use to the stick placement but it's just a bad habit.

Xbox gets a lot of flak for crap D-pads but my memory is hazy on the Duke one, what was that like?

 

[TGO]

You've never played a N64 have you?

First off, the question still applies regardless of if it was used or not, its the mentality of the design thats in question.
But Yeah Turok multiplayer man, Zelda and Mario Kart 64, Mario 64, Golden Eye and a shitty Castlevania, but N64's was rare back in the day. But the controller terrible, its analogue felt cheap too.
Controller is an important part of a console purchase to me, Segas MD 6 button was nice, the Saturns was good too but I never got one of those untill it was dead
the Snes was ace and PS Pad/DS is the evolution of it.
Dreamcasts pad was I don't know, I think they was challenging the N64 pad.
Microsoft obviously ran with the DC design and continued to mold it into something more decent.

 

[Pyramid head]

I'd say the continued production and success of the design for over 15 years would be a strange fate for the worst controller ever. Wouldn't you?

That would be over 15 years of resting on your laurels and putting brand recognition over functionality and quality you're talking about. It's a long shot from 'worst controller ever' but those DS3 triggers are badly designed and feel every bit as cheap as the mechanism inside them looks, and after picking mine up after a long time to play Tomb Raider on PC (my 360 controller was downstairs), I was reminded of the horrible mushy feeling and weird deadzones of the sticks. It's really noticable after playing the same game using a 360 controller.

And the Sixaxis version felt like it was made from yogurt pot plastic.

Aside from all the other obviously terrible controllers out there, the N64 one was always the worst to me. Losing access to 1/3 of the buttons no matter which way you held it was such a fundamentally terrible and wasteful design.

 

[Number_6]

For a lot of genres the bare minimum is 8 directions, including all circular directions is an improvement for almost every genre.

I can think of a large number of cases where analogue input can significantly improve the gameplay. Driving is pretty awful on keyboard and any 3D game where you're moving a character is improved with analogue input.

What does this even mean? A single thumb on a stick can be just as accurate and reactive as 3 fingers on a keyboard.

If you don't want to relinquish control of your movement with a keyboard you have to keep 3 fingers on WASD at all times. This mean you have 3 of your digits relegated to only controlling movement. A stick requires only a single digit to control movement and also allows for the thumb to have control of another input with clicking the stick in, this frees up the rest of your hand for other inputs.

Lmao. I can't believe somebody's actually trying to argue that 3 fingers on WASD is superior to one thumb on an analog stick.

Three fingers is far less intuitive, plus you have to give up control if the game uses other buttons on the keyboard like Q, E, R, F, numbers, pretty much anything but Shift or Spacebar.

The keyboard is good for games like Starcraft where you'll use a lot of hotkeys, but for games where you're directly controlling your character, it's complete shit.

Come on now guys. Seriously, you'll argue that one thumb on a stick is better than 3 fingers on keys? It doesn't matter when your other fingers are wasted on, say, an xbox pad. Let's count: one thumb on stick, index free for triggers, 3 fingers wasted. Or keyboard: 3 fingers for movement, two for various other keys such as space, tab, ctrl, alt, caps, numbers, etc. Either way, you've got your movement and like 2-3 other buttons at least.

And please don't give me that shit about sacrificing movement to press other letter keys on keyboard. You sacrifice ALL MOVEMENT to press the d-pad. You sacrifice ALL LOOKING on the right stick to press face buttons.

Anyway, forget intuitive and forget WASD. If you know how to actually type by touch, then you should know that ESDF is where it's at.

 

[britt0n]

I never liked the way that the wii remote felt sideways. The d pad was too small and it felt uneven. But it's a small gripe.

 

[Poodlestrike]

The DUKE

Like hell it was.

Maybe for you malformed tiny people it was terrible, but for us properly sized humans it was fantastic.

(But seriously, other than being fuckhuege it really was a pretty damn great controller, other than maybe the placement of the black and white buttons.

 

[thechristoph]

To me the Duke's major problem is that the buttons were really pointy. Like instead of being flat cylinders they were almost pyramid-shaped.

 

[cartman414]

DualShock 4 is pretty awful. Stick quality is basically nonexistent, poor triggers for shooters, the existence of a touchpad makes little sense for the majority of games that use the touchpad and the huge, glowing light makes it really really gaudy.

It's a step down from previous DualShocks. Really hope they do a 'pro' controller.

Quite possibly the most uncomfortable controller in the modern era. Far too small and input is nowhere near precise enough as it should be.

The preceding DS controllers were smaller and less comfortable. The DS4 is the first one that actually feels reasonably comfy.

 

[Arcane0ne]

Jaguar: Too big and has excessive buttons.

N64: Strange shape and buttons layout.

Dreamcast: Sadly this is one of my favourite consoles but the gamepad is bad comparing with glorious Saturn 3D gamepad and lacks second analog joystick etc.

Gamecube: only good for platformers but for other generes is a pain in the ass.

Xbox original: Too big and bad white - black buttons position.

Wii: Bad grip for horizontal wiimote and strange button position and only has few buttons.

PS4:Cheap materials and the most important ridiculous battery life.

 

[Guardian Monkey]

Like hell it was.

Maybe for you malformed tiny people it was terrible, but for us properly sized humans it was fantastic.

(But seriously, other than being fuckhuege it really was a pretty damn great controller, other than maybe the placement of the black and white buttons.

Nah the S killed it.. which pretty much was the 360 controller. Which most can agree that it was/is the best if not one of the top ones I would think.

 

[LamerDeluxe]

also runner up for me is:

What a twitchy bucket on nonsense this thing was!

I have this one, there is no real way to comfortably use the jog dial. With Ridge Racer the force-feedback is nothing special. However, when used with V-Rally 2 it has some of the most amazing force-feedback effects, mud and snow feel really convincing, first having a lot of resistance and after overcoming that a lot less. Even asphalt feels great.

Gran Turismo was supposed to support this, I have a demo of it that does, but the force-feedback is incredibly bad.

And the person posting the neGcon must have never used one. It is the best controller for WipEout and works really well with Gran Turismo, Rollcage, Downhill Mountainbiking and other racers. The Japanese black ones are even better (slightly smaller), I have two of those and two white ones.

 

[The Shadow]

Only out of the ones I've actually used and not just those that look silly, this piece of shit:

It's so bad it's actually an asymmetrical controller that I hate, and that's usually an automatic plus for me.

For a controller that was supposed to be more conventional and closer to what Microsoft and Sony had, it was pretty bad. I never had trouble with the S-controlller or DS2 but yeah, I just never liked the GC controller.

- D-pad was way too small
- Triggers felt squishy. I liked the idea, but awful execution.
- Handles were too short, like the butt of my thumbs was hanging off.

I probably hated the OG duke more than the GC controller, but at least Microsoft identified their mistake and rectified it.