I thought Zelda’s Farore’s Wind’s direction fully required analog?
I’m almost sure that Ness’s PK Thunder will be completely unusable without the analog stick.
I’ll double-check these two later. 
If analog was required for any motion, then the Wii Remotes would be unusable.*
(*Note- I am not arguing that a Wii Remote is comparable to a Gamecube Controller, Pro Controller, or even a Wii Remote + Nunchuk. I’m only saying that the move can be executed at various lengths in various directions with a Wii Remote.)
Again, I cannot comment on Ness because he is one of my least touched characters.
This could also be a possible idea to build on.
Of course there are quite a few issues here but still very possible.
Ok, just double-checked (at least on the 3DS version, as it was easier for me to access) for Zelda’s Farore’s Wind and Ness’ PK Thunder.
Both moves do take advantage of more-than-8 directions for controlling the, well, direction of the move. That is to say you can use the analog and get smaller increments than just 45-degrees on those moves.
Again, that’s not to say that a full analog joystick ala LS-64 is absolutely required for a Smash arcade stick, but it’s still something to think about if the idea was to replace the analog stick with a digital one.
So you are suggesting two of these to be mounted to a joystick?
If you watch that video, he goes into Farore’s Wind, and while he does not many distances are possible, he also points out that many are not used often because they are difficult to do consistently.
As always, I am not saying that an analog stick doesn’t offer more possibilities. I am arguing that those possibilities are small in comparison to the cost/effort.
Even if someone manages to built one, it doesn’t mean it will work as well as a Gamecube controller or Pro Controller.
Doing it for the sake of doing it is fine with me, but I hope no one has illusions that having an analog fightstick for Smash will suddenly make them great players.
No arguments there. This just confirmed to me that we’re on the same page.
I personally would still go out of my way to put an analog stick in there just for the full 100% use of the game’s analogs, and potentially for use for any other games, but that’s just me. And that we’re Tech Talk here.
If someone were to make were to make a PCB for a joy stick like how the optical boards are for the JLF, maybe a magnetic induction.
But instead of giving digital output it gave analog output.
With all the current community made boards, I can see a board that gives 360 degree movement that could take the place of a analog stick (technically it wouldn’t be true analog).