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I've got a original NES controller the square one and a dog bone controller and its a little bit hard to hit diagonals on the original and the dogbone is slightly squirrely its a little too easy to hit diagonals, I've tried the NES Advantage joystick but wasn't super impressed I haven't tried the NES Edge so tell me if its significantly better than the advantage. I'm thinking about building my own joystick box since it would be super easy. Thoughts?

NES Edge? If you mean the Max - no - that thing SUCKS, stay far, far away.

Building a joystick or using a converter are great alternatives. If you want NES authenticity, I was super pleased to find out at purchase that the NES Classic controllers have softer membranes and are really smooth at engaging diagonals. I have two and both are great. Look into converting them for use on the OG.

NES controllers can vary. I have about 7 or 8 official OG NES pads, one or two have poor diagonals and the others have no problems with diagonals. The only thing I really don't like about the pad is the sharp edge compared to other controllers. I also have a Hudson joycard for FC, which only works on FC with expansion port (though it's possible to make an adapter), but has a nice tactile feel to it (though it's similar to a standard NES pad, but with turbo similar to a TG-16 pad).

Yeah, I've tried just about everything to make the NES MAX usable, but no dice:

• Buying a replacement Xbox 360 analog stick, shaving it down, and putting it in
• Gluing an SNES pad on the black ring
• Using a 3D-printed part I got on eBay; feels really nice but I still couldn't hit the diagonals
• Gluing bits of thin plastic to the insides (think NES cartridge covers)... well, that almost worked, but only for one side

One of these days I'm going to pick up the lost art of pad hacking so I could make a workable stick/project box out of the PCB. I really like that Turbo B and Turbo A are actual buttons and not activated by a switch.

Other than all that, keep an eye out for the SNES Capcom Power Fighter Stick and make sure it comes with the NES cable, or possibly make your own SNES-to-NES adapter.

I've been on a quest to find the perfect NES/Famicom controller for years now. Considering the popularity of the system and the amount of peripherals available, it'd weird that it's such a difficult thing to achieve.

So far the best "official" solution I've found is the "New Hori Commander" (model HFC-07), a controller special in that was made for the AV Famicom, meaning it comes with the NES-style plug. I have a few of these and while it's certainly good, the d-pad is still somewhat mushy.

What I currently use is actually bit of a Frankenstein setup. I have a Hori 10B Fighting Commander (a PS1 controller) plugged to a PS1-to-Famicom extension port -adapter, plugged to a Famicom extension port-to-NES -adapter, plugged to a NES extension cord leading to Analogue NT Mini. The d-pad is great, there are many options for autofire (the controller itself allows turning on autofire for any of the face and shoulder buttons via individual switches), and the PS1-to-Famicom -adapter maps two of the face buttons as Turbo A and Turbo B.

The button layout isn't quite as I'd like it but that I could still deal with, since it only concerns a few games where I'd want to switch between "Normal B, Normal A" and "Turbo B, Normal A" quickly. The bigger issue is that it's not actually 100% compatible with all games. I think it's because the controller's signal technically comes as an extension port signal, and not all games recognize this, but I don't have any genuine Famicom extension port controllers to verify this with. This doesn't affect many games, I've only found a small handful (Kabuki Quantum Fighter doesn't recognize it at all, Golf recognizes it but the inputs are messed up so that up is left, etc) out of all the games I've tested it with, but still.

You'd think there were many aftermarket [system]-to-NES -adapters available but weirdly, no...

The D-pad membranes get worn and don't to diagonals properly.
I have been able to get some controllers working by taking them apart and cleaning them thoroughly, but a lot are just worn.
I haven't been able to find good replacements, the current ones that are clear sometimes you get lucky and they work.

I've been using an 8bitdo NES wireless adapter with a Switch SNES wireless controller. Pretty solid controller.
I also got a NES classic controller and stuck a 8bitdo NES Classic DIY PCB and it works great.
Playing on a CRT I did not experience any noticeable lag, usually I can tell by playing Super Mario Bros. if something is off.

Maybe a circuit could be designed to adapt Genesis or Saturn controllers to the NES.

As it is, wiring a SNES to NES adapter is dead easy, you just need a SNES controller socket and a NES controller plug, but the SNES pad lacks the lovely smooth pivoting d-pad that 6-button Genesis pads possess.

I was thinking about getting a Max for padhacking myself, but when I first saw that diagram a while back, I assumed it meant the turbo buttons couldn't be used for padhacking. Ended up just using a PCB from an old yellowed Famicom dogbone I had, don't really need turbo for most games I play. Cord is short AF, but thankfully extension cords are easy to come by, and Bratwurst there was nice enough to make me an NES to FC adapter so I could use my padhack (and Zappers!) with my OG FC as well as my toploader.

This is a bit out there and doesn't really help with playing on original hardware, but given that I have mostly moved to MiSTer now and have given up on the idea that any membrane-based d-pad is going to be reliable anymore, I recently picked up a Mixbox and it is excellent. It's a little odd moving from d-pads to a WASD key layout, but it is literally impossible to hit a diagonal unless I want to and it's really easy to replace keys/buttons if they go bad. The Universal version has an easily upgradable Brook UFB in it, so it works with all my USB-based consoles (and PC and MiSTer).