C buttons are meant for camera controls so a good amount of games did have fewer buttons to use. And dpad’s positioning meant for most games it served no use at all. There is no reason both couldn’t have been on the same handle.

It’s not as bad as I thought it was yesterday when I wrote without thinking about it too much but it’s still a big step down from the SNES controller. There is a reason a lot of people prefer modern replacements like Brawler64