I don’t think either were perfect designs, they were both pioneering and can be respected for that, neither were a “mess”. At the time I personally preferred the feel of the N64’s analog stick since it was directionally biased in 8 directions which works better for games of the time, and met expectations of the time. My main problem with the DualShock is that they stuck with it while they should have, in my opinion, swapped the left stick with the d-pad for the PS2 onwards.
Personally I don’t see how Dualshock’s subjectively sub-optimal analog stick pla–ement compares to N64’s mess of a controller.
I don’t think either were perfect designs, they were both pioneering and can be respected for that, neither were a “mess”. At the time I personally preferred the feel of the N64’s analog stick since it was directionally biased in 8 directions which works better for games of the time, and met expectations of the time. My main problem with the DualShock is that they stuck with it while they should have, in my opinion, swapped the left stick with the d-pad for the PS2 onwards.