Ah! I've been building out a couple raspberry pi console-emulators and settled on using some original SNES controllers along with the buffalo USB clones of them. In the process I dug out my childhood N64 as well, and I put it in the "to-ebay/garage sale" pile without reservation mostly because of how much I despise those controllers!
That controller has to be one the strangest design choices nintendo has ever made. I'm pretty sure I used that d-pad in <= 1 game
It was the biggest launch to date of thumb sticks, I think they wanted people to not worry about whether they would like them or not.
That makes sense. If people ended up not liking them or they broke easily developers could fall back to using the d-pad instead.
Funny; they're still my favorite. Fitted so well in my hands.