Yeah... They were uncomfortable to hold but what made them bad was that they were analog and they were non self-centering. In other words, if you moved it left it stayed left until you moved it right. There's nothing necessarily wrong with those features but most of the games of the time were designed with digital joysticks that centered themselves in mind. Then there's the fact that they tended to break pretty easily. If you find a used 5200, chances are the joysticks won't work (at least in certain directions).