One if the better controllers I had for the Atari ST was the Quickshot Maverick 2 - it was rock solid, a good facsimile of an arcade controller, and took anything my younger hands could throw at it.

I had a Blaze controller for the PS1 that had a spring-loaded rotational control around the D-pad. Not a jogger style rotational dial like the JogCon, but one where you pushed it one way, and it returned itself to neutral, almost identical to the set up on the left half of this controller:

It was kinda cool and was designed for first person driving experiences to simulate "driving", but it just approximated analogue inputs rather than be natively be an analogue input, so games like Formula 1 '97 were still rock hard to play.

I used the official Final Fantasy XIV controller as a daily driver too and it's was brilliant, even if the drivers and configuration app was janky as anything.

I bought a replacement when the analogue sticks went tits up, but looking at their current price, maybe I'll keep hold of it in it's box...