I guess everyone can develop a device preference.

I remember playing Red Alert on 90s Toshiba Satellite Pro laptops with the cursor nipple in the middle of the keyboard, I got pretty good at using the nipple (lmao). But they didn't really come back on newer laptop models after that.

Same seemed to happen with most trackball hype, although I knew they were still around. I don't recall if it was one with the ball on top or on the left side, all I remember not being able to ever scroll in the direction I needed because the angle was always off for me.

Another thing from that time that stuck with me is that gaming joysticks were more common. I had one for some favorite games, but because I used it so much I am now crippled with the "Invert Y" syndrome. Whenever I play games with controllers I will have to invert the Y axis, because that's what makes most sense based on the joysticks from back then.