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I see the TV adverts for online gambling/gaming with virtual Poker, virtual roulette wheel.
All the same games that were available on early console systems back in the 1980's; Atari 2600 Poker Plus, Black Jack and
Roulette wheel.

Though, the animated 3D characters and realistic background certainly change the atmosphere of the game.

Almost right. The best one was the Wico Bathandle. That's a fact. In games where you were supposed to wiggle it as fast as possible you could just go *poing poing poing* on the stick with your finger and the springs would do the rest for you. You always got a perfect score.

My fav is the NES Advantage, but yeah, the NES Max was a great controller as well, most controllers of today still have that general shape, with a few buttons and analog sticks added.

I never really got the attraction of the D-pad.

My favorite joystick was one that required a very short throw and not too much force, but was stiff enough to bounce back quickly. I forget who made it, but it was a pretty cool and simple piece of engineering.

Wico! They made arcade joysticks, and just happened to put out a few good ones for the Atari 2600. I've never seen one IRL, but I hear they're quite good. :-)

It's a personal preference thing, and I seem to be in the minority around here. However, every time I fire up one of the classics (Pac Man, Berzerk, heck even Donkey Kong) and try to control it with a gamepad, I quit in frustration after a couple minutes. Some of it is surely do to my experience with a joystick vs. gamepad.

It's possible too that it's your memories of the games. Galaga, for example, is best played on a proper standup machine where you can *SLAM* that controller back and forth. Not so good for the machine, but a lot of fun. :-)

How about this one?

Agreed, the NES Advantage made Nintendo fun!

The only other console I've bothered buying was the Dreamcast, and that was because I got bored one day. I never did find a good stick I liked for that console that could do it all, although there were a few that came close.

And here's a picture of the original Atari joystick and a few other classics, since they're missing from the article.