Constrained in the sense that physical mechanisms would stop you, but a handheld controller cannot. Operating a tank is extremely tactile. There’s a literal ton of moving parts in a very tight space. It is a gun you are inside of.

Steel Battalion’s infamously enormous Xbox controller was halfway to a child’s toy dashboard because the only way to convey all those fiddly dials and levers was to actually provide them. Complexity within the game is not the same experience. It has to be present in-person. Quitting is not a menu option; it’s an ejection key you grip with white knuckles until the last second.

The HOTAS experience for some Red Baron shit is a Wiimote duct-taped to a broomstick. Force feedback would be massively better, but the stick not corresponding to the plane is a realistic possibility when things go fully pear-shaped. This goal and available technology align especially well.

I’d argue the ideal home tank game is a smartphone app you slot in front of the itty-bitty window of a glorified Rubbermaid container before climbing inside. Map all the thumbsticks and triggers of a generic controller onto widgets and switches on the lid. Disguise the main cannon’s foam round having nowhere to go by curling it down and back into the magazine when you shove it forward. Convey recoil within that tube by projecting a ring of light that slides back and forth.

… now I’m wondering how cheaply you could do a low-friction bowl so the whole thing can rock unpredictably with your center-of-gravity. Maybe just make the bottom round, and extend little legs when the treads are still.