Oof, sounds like you missed the whole space sim genre then. Took extra hardware for the best experience, but even with a cheap joystick it could be amazing stuff. I enjoyed first-person shooters and the like, but TIE Fighter and Freespace were 3D to me back then. I loved my Sidewinder gamepad in that era, too.

That may or may not be why fifth-gen console 3D does next to nothing for me. Until the Dreamcast came out, it all looked way behind PC, and almost no one was doing the amazing spritework that they excelled at anymore.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Well, yeah, OK, flight sims. We had flight sims, too.

And yeah, visually PC games were way ahead of the curve, but that was part of the frustration, right? You had all these super polished, advanced graphics and you were stuck on mouse and keyboard or trying to make do with a joystick or a remedial gamepad. Even when PC pads started including some form of analog stick they were so flimsy. I was on a PS2 pad for a good long while, both for native and emulated games.