A friend of mine paid for a joystick for Street Fighter and I agree with you, it really changed the game at made it much more difficult for me. This was something that was irritating about arcades vs home systems at the time in the 80's. Unless you went out of your way to get a joystick, you weren't really going to be any good at the arcade version of the game because it is a very different experience and not just with the stick, but button placement and size as well.

The age where they started making those home controller that would automatically press the button for you as fast as it could possibly be done was a pretty sneaky trick as well.