And yet... when a controller goes wrong, it can go very wrong. and not even the big boys and girls of the games industry always get it right. Here are 10 big name controllers which really should've been better.
Prepare your sacred cows for a battering!
Not so the Amiga CD32 pad, which - like most things to do with the CD32 - seemed designed to be as off-putting as possible. Truly, everything about the CD32 was misguided, but the "reverse boomerang" styling, spongy, diagonal movement-scuppering, disc thumbpad and flimsy buttons of its controller simply heaped additional and unnecessary insult upon a great deal of injury.
Ironically, it curved upwards in direct opposition to the corners of the player's mouth.
It wasn't the worst idea in theory; Atari's reasoning was that all the extra buttons would allow for more complex, PC-like games, but the company learned to its regret that people don't buy consoles to play PC-like games.
Yes, controllers were arriving with more and more buttons - but mostly those buttons were arranged in such a way that they were easy to reach with your thumb or forefinger. The Jaguar only had three of those, and required you to briefly relinquish control so that you could press one of the keypad keys.
Still it was great for all those Jaguar telephone 'em ups.
Appropriately, its controller didn't know what it was either. Though looking rather similar to many modern smart-TV remotes, the CD-i controller was also the default method of playing games, yet was entirely unsuited to functioning as anything other than a sort of impractical, flimsy, ill-responsive, mouse, pointer thing.
Philips released other, supposedly improved, controllers for its machine - including a more traditional gamepad - but they all tried to fix the issues with the original by adding more issues of their own.
"Do you know what our new car needs so that driving is more precise? A MASSIVE STEERING WHEEL."
The first and only joystick which succeeded in not only giving you arthritis, but also made it feel like you already had arthritis.
Alright, it was usable, but only while harbouring an inescapable feeling that it could've been so much better.
That flimsy analogue stick lacks feedback, most of the buttons were superfluous, you needed a third hand to be able to use it properly, and the only thing in its favour was that the Gamecube controller might've been even worse.