In the end this is a question what you're used to. Nintendo fans think the Gamecube controller was the best, Sony fans will like the Dualshock the most, and both of our Xbox fans will prefer the Xbox controller. I might be something of an exception to my own rule, as I liked the Gamecube the most, but actually prefer the smaller Xbox controller.

Having a clear default pair of select and back in the form of A+B was probably the best thing about it. It annoyes me to no end how it's circle+cross with some PS2 games, triangle+circle with others etc. I honestly think all four last gen consoles had a horrible dpads, so that's a moot point.

GC Pad + Metroid Prime = Perfection

I liked it, but I like all my buttons to be uniform in size. The C stick was utterly useless, as it was so small, as was the D-Pad. Needed a Second Z button. But I still enjoyed the controller. It worked out for me.

I really like it, I think it's probably the best part of a very sucky console.

It's by far the best controller from last gen IMO.

My only problem with it is that the D-Pad is the most awful thing....it's pretty much unusable.  (PS2 D-pad was the best last gen, but it still sucked. The Wii has a great D-Pad)

You know how they say the 64 controller was made for Mario 64? I seriously think the GameCube controller was made for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It's absolutely perfect for the game. I seriously can't imagine playing it with any other controller, not even the Wiimote and Nunchuk. 

Good catch by GreyAcumen, MrPickles, and Rol on the shoulder triggers thing. Each of them were really 2-in-1 -- one during the pull and the second at the end of the pull.

If some games made you go all the way down to the second position before anything would trigger, I would fault the game and not the controller.

The controller was the worst last gen, the C-stick is broken crap, the small d-pad is 100x worse then the Sony one. The trigger buttons stick and are very bad to use, the Z-button just sucks, the A button and the other just feel akward, it feels like a poor Mad catz knock off..

It was my favorite controller last gen too. I only had two main issues with it.

First was the analog stick and the c-stick not being side by side. I had the same issue with the XBOX controller. It just made playing games like XIII and 007 overly frusterating for me. I'm definately not a seasoned FPS though so that might have had a lot to do with it.

Secondly, and this really was only a problem on very few games, was how much you had to push the R and L triggers in for them to respond. This almost wasnt an issue for most games but I did find it annoying whenever friends wanted to play party games that had mini-games involving lots of trigger pushing. Mainly games like the Mario Parties and Pokemon. This is almost a non-issue because it was only like one mini-game per game (so it was a very small fraction of the game that I have issues with) but it was very frusterating to feel like you could have doubled your score on something if you had a Dual Shock Controller.

But yeah i have 4 regular GC controllers and 2 Wavebirds and have had absolutely no issues with any of them. Plus the battery life on the Wavebirds is freakin' awesome.

I like it, I used the D pad in every Resident Evil game (But 4 of course), the control feels good in my hands, the button layout was good, the only thinks I didn't used to, was the Z button, too small, and the b button, really small too...

I liked the Cube controllers, very much improved over the 64 controllers.