I am willing to plug in my laptop on my LCD TV and plug in an USB to SNES adaptor so that I can play almost any console game on my TV.

I thought that it could be cool that elemental have an option to change the controls system so that you can play with a gamepad rather than a mouse. It might be more efficient to play with a mouse, while still be playable with a game pad.

CivRev succeeded well in making gamepad controls, I don't think it would be too hard for elemental to do the same. Also, considering that elemental wants to be a modable game, there might be some modder that would have prefered a gamepad for their mod.

It also reminds me of PTO 2 which was on PC and then got converted to SNES. They managed to redesign the controls by assigning a button to change the mode. For example, you could start in the menu and moving around makes you move in the menu. If you push a button, your cursor goes on the map and now moving around moves your cursor. Pressing that button again allow to select your object listed at the bottom of the screen. So a system like this is not optimal compared to a mouse, but it still makes the game playable.