D-pads on Playstation controllers are completely awful, even today, in my opinion. The 4 direction buttons being separated instead of being in a complete cross-shape as in your typical Nintendo controllers, makes it feel very wrong to me when you're rolling your thumb from one direction to the next. Longer play sessions with any Playstation controller where I'm using the D-pad actually irritate my thumb. Plus the analog sticks on Playstation controllers are placed too close together. My thumbs bump into each other far too easily if I'm playing a game that requires the use of both analog sticks. Worst controller design ever in my opinion.
More on topic -- I also only ever used game pads for consoles back in the day. PC gaming was always keyboard/mouse. Having re-played many of those older games in more recent years with a gamepad (my DOS gamepad of choice is a PC ProPad) ... I wish my younger self had had one back in the 90s instead of being forced to use a keyboard. Much better experience for platformers, and other action-y games. I even strangely enjoy using one for first-person shooters, though keyboard+mouse is obviously superior there.
EDIT: Just wanted to add -- the only people I ever knew back in the 90's that used actual joysticks were those who played stuff like flight sims. I don't remember anyone back then who enjoyed using a joystick for playing stuff like platformers, etc on their PCs.