Let me say the following:
Please consider that all my designing and hosting of the jam is done with the best intent, out of an excitement I found when attempting to work within the limitations I imagined Yokoi and others did. The breakthroughs I experienced, and the delight in finding solutions and new insights was something I thought was genuinely profound, and was very much linked to the limitations of the genre.
This isn't a paid role :D
Here's my proposition:
Please consider my responses in this thread. As a long-time teacher and designer, I do have a method to my madness, and for this jam its intended to find a particular gold I think that is within the very constraints we are discussing.
If you feel the chosen control scheme constraint is too limiting for you, then let me know here and I'm willing to add the second layout of the 4-POSITION buttons as well. But we have an entire month to make a game... so please at least give the chosen constraint some real brainstorming time. I really think there's alot more potential in there than we may be giving it credit for.
One way to make art is to have every colour of paint and then to paint whatever you want from this. Another way is to limit yourself to blues, and paint what this inspires. I do feel I'm trying to push us into Picasso's blue period but we are wanting more colours :D