control panel questions

[mindwave]

Team,

This is a question about opinion and needs so I dont think its been covered, but I did look, so here goes.

Im a child of the 80s, so much so that I never really adaptrd to the stand alone game console controllers.

So here we are a 'few' years later and im building my own full size arcade emulater for my room.

Put together a controller board , plugged it into my raspi4 and started up a bare bones retropi, thats when i reaklized I needed some opinions.

The board I but together was made from one of the $50 dual button kits from amazon, when i built my board with 2 sets of 1 joystick and 6 buttons.

Then when I started running the retropie setup and controller config I realized I was about 4 buttons short.

After lots of creative 'non swearing' i realized that i 'could' skip setting up the additional control buttons, so I did, but afterwards I started thinking and was wondering about what functions I might be missing?

Now when I started planning this my main impetus was to play VANGUARD, and Tail Gunner. Initially I wanted to build a full size sit down cabinet for Tail Gunner, but then realized that it wouldnt really work for most other games.

So I started working on a full size stand up cabinet, the control layout on most of the games Im familar with had 1 joystick and 4 buttions usually in a NSEW configuration.

BUT if i stick to that I KNOW im limiting mysekf in the future.

However I know I dont want 1 joystick and like 2 dozen buttons, like Ive seen others build

Then I thought maybe some mini Thumb STicks?

SO, any and all opinions, thoughts and ideas are appreciated, photos, wiring layouts again I am really wanting to learn all about this system.

I will be starting with the basics Vanguard, Tail Gunner, etc. But weve got the XBOX, WII most of the current consoles, ( I have a 15yo).

All thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

Thanks

J