Question Best D-Pad?

[Throner]

I’m attempting a Wii portable at the moment and I have a very strong, almost irrational dislike of the GameCube controller’s D-Pad. It feels so small and unsatisfying when I’ve tried to use it to play SNES or GBA games.

I’m curious what people consider the ideal D-Pad, portable or otherwise. I’m looking for alternatives but I’m also just curious.

 

[cy]

For a portable, I prefer having Dpad buttons. My Starlight G-Wii used four 3rd party GameCube start buttons as Dpad buttons:

I really like Dpad buttons because they offer perfect input accuracy - something I've noticed a lot of portables struggle with.

If you have your heart set on it being an actual Dpad and not Dpad buttons, The Dpad from the Gameboy Advance SP feels great and I don't ever remember having incorrect inputs with it. Reworking it to fit into a G-Wii and function identically might be tough though. There's also the Dpad in Ginger's Louii Twoii build found here. I've not tested it, so I can't speak for how good the input accuracy is, but it looks a lot better than the GameCube Dpad.

 

[kolenot]

I'm not much of a hardcore D-pad fan, but I liked the wii-u's pro controller D-pad and the Playstation controllers have a D-pad design which might be interesting.
Another one I hear people praising a lot is the OG SNES D-pad.
I agree that the D-pad is the worst thing about a gamecube controller.

(GBA SP also is a very good one)

 

[YveltalGriffin]

The PS Vita 2000 has the most satisfying and precise D-pad I've ever encountered.

It's a single plastic piece, but unlike every other Playstation controller, it doesn't feel stiff. The buttons are clicky, but the actuation is springy, which lets you roll it around smoothly, not unlike a tiny Sega Saturn D-pad or Neo Geo Pocket stick.

It seems the secret lies in Sony's perfect tolerances between the SMD metal dome switches, the silicone membrane on top of them, the plastic D-pad, and the shell itself. The pivot point in the center is the perfect size and height to prevent more than two neighboring directions from ever being pressed simultaneously.

GPD, Retroid, Ayn, and others have tried really hard to copy the Vita D-pad, but they've never perfectly replicated these super tight tolerances. On the GPD Win 4, you can push on the entire D-pad and press all four directions at the same time. That's physically impossible on the Vita 2000, so they really messed up the pivot point!

In Super Metroid, walljumping requires alternating left and right presses. If you ever press up or down during a walljump, you instantly drop the spinjump and fall. So the Vita 2000's ability to prevent spurious inputs is simply magical in that scenario. My other stress test is Level 8 of NES Battletoads. If you hold down to crouch and then double-click left or right, you'll slide on the ground. This is next to impossible to do in a controlled manner on less precise D-pads, but the Vita 2000 makes it trivial.

TL;DR: if you care about precision, focus on the pivot point. Having a nice D-pad makes Virtual Console and emulation way more enjoyable, so I hope you can figure out a good solution for your portable!

 

[cy]

The PS Vita 2000 has the most satisfying and precise D-pad I've ever encountered.

It's a single plastic piece, but unlike every other Playstation controller, it doesn't feel stiff. The buttons are clicky, but the actuation is springy, which lets you roll it around smoothly, not unlike a tiny Sega Saturn D-pad or Neo Geo Pocket stick.

It seems the secret lies in Sony's perfect tolerances between the SMD metal dome switches, the silicone membrane on top of them, the plastic D-pad, and the shell itself. The pivot point in the center is the perfect size and height to prevent more than two neighboring directions from ever being pressed simultaneously.

GPD, Retroid, Ayn, and others have tried really hard to copy the Vita D-pad, but they've never perfectly replicated these super tight tolerances. On the GPD Win 4, you can push on the entire D-pad and press all four directions at the same time. That's physically impossible on the Vita 2000, so they really messed up the pivot point!

In Super Metroid, walljumping requires alternating left and right presses. If you ever press up or down during a walljump, you instantly drop the spinjump and fall. So the Vita 2000's ability to prevent spurious inputs is simply magical in that scenario. My other stress test is Level 8 of NES Battletoads. If you hold down to crouch and then double-click left or right, you'll slide on the ground. This is next to impossible to do in a controlled manner on less precise D-pads, but the Vita 2000 makes it trivial.

TL;DR: if you care about precision, focus on the pivot point. Having a nice D-pad makes Virtual Console and emulation way more enjoyable, so I hope you can figure out a good solution for your portable!

Yeah, Dpad buttons really are just a "kill it with fire" sort of solution when it comes to input accuracy. Problem is, it does also kill diagonal inputs with said fire. This works fine for games like Puyo Puyo and Tetris, but games like Contra and Gain Ground really suffer from it. I probably should have made this clear with my initial post: Having a real Dpad is better when the input accuracy is reasonably well preserved.

Making a good Dpad really does feel like a lost art these days (outside of what Yveltal mentioned above with what emulation handheld companies and the PS Vita 2000 model did).

 

[Throner]

That's a great point Cy, I didn't even think about that.

I'm clearly going down an over-engineering path with the d-pad. I think realistically a standard cross that's larger than the Gamecube's with good clearances and travel would be more than decent. Anything more elaborate than that and I'd have to have a very long think about the use cases.

As for the actual question, I've heard people talk about the Neo Geo's pad/stick hybrid as being one of the best-feeling solutions. Would love to try it out one day.