After reading the rest though, I still don't agree. While the game is a pretty unique experience even by today's standards, it's still over 15 years old. If people are discouraged by the controls, they may write it off as a broken game from a bygone era long before it can be patched. If SEGA really wanted to alter the controls in hopes of making the game easier for newcomers, they should've made enabling/disabling analog an option that the user could set themselves.
Just gotta put my two cents in as someone who has never played the original-- it's not broken. In my humble and uninformed opinion, there's nothing so heinously wrong with the controls that I am discouraged from playing the game as a result. First run through I got all B's (though not on individual mares, which were naturally more mixed) and an A on Elliot's Twin Seeds. And as I become more familiar with the mares, I get better. I'm a fairly casual gamer, and my usual fare is along the lines of Zelda or Kingdom Hearts, i.e. not time based, achieve perfect run type of games. So if anything is "discouraging," it's that getting those A's might not be challenging enough. (Though fricking Gillwing still thwarts me on far too regular a basis...)
For new dreamers whose hearts go aflutter at the prospect of dominating the leaderboards, then good for them, they have a challenge ahead of them and since they won't be constantly saying, Man this was so much easier back in the day, they'll revel in the achievements they DO manage to make. (Or like me with Gillwing, I don't just say, Man, these controls are totally broken! Obviously that's why I have such a hard time with this one particular boss and I should just quit because it has nothing to do with my lack of experience, and there's no way I'll get better if I keep trying.) They may not be impressive scores by your standards, (though they ought to be, since you know how much harder it is to maintain certain links in this version) and I appreciate your frustration at not being able to achieve the scores you're used to, but I can't help but feel that making assertions like this belittles the newbies' experiences.
Me, I'm just thrilled to finally be able to explore this world since I found out about it nine-or-so years ago, so I'll freely admit I probably don't know jack about what other gamers will think. If they agree that the game is broken before you tell them it is, then okay, valid point. Would you really think the game was that bad if you hadn't played the original and didn't have the internet insisting this one sucks? Because that's mostly what I see in a lot of these reaction posts: This version sucks! I'll still buy it because I'm a fan and want to support the franchise, but I won't play it because it sucks so much, it's not even enjoyable.
For people just passing through looking for an opinion before buying, this is maybe not what you want to get people to buy the port.