Hey everyone, hope all is well. Today's blog is a bit different as I will be looking at Nintendo 64 controller joystick repair. Over the past couple months, my beloved Nintendo 64 controllers saw their joysticks significantly deteriorate. They had been loose for a long time, but after some intense Starfox 64 play, they seemed to be pretty much shot. So I dove into the world of replacement joysticks. You can find replacement sticks almost anywhere. Ebay, Amazon, and even some retro game stores carry replacement joysticks. At first it seemed a bit overwhelming, but after some research and trial and error I can say that I am quite happy with my discoveries.
Since I've been doing a lot of work on my old consoles and games, I figured I'd give a shot at fixing my busted up N64 joysticks. If you want to do the same there is some things to consider. First is what is going on with the controller. In my case it was very loose joysticks. Second and far less important is what caused this. Normal wear over the years can be an answer or a game called Mario Party can be its own answer. Regardless the reason, just keep it in the back of your mind for now. To get inside the controller all you need is a small Philips head screwdriver. Make sure all screws are removed before trying to open the controller. There are two hidden screw in the area where the rumble pack/memory card/ transfer pack goes in so be sure to get them too. once opened you'll see the joystick compartment is screwed into the controller. Unscrew the three silver screws, but not the black screw yet. Follow the wires to where they connect to the board. Work the connector at the end of the wires out of the port it is plugged into. I used the flat edge of a knife and just slowly worked it out. The joystick should now be free from the controller.
Now that you have that out you can go ahead and unscrew the little black screw. The joystick front will pop open, but you'll have to gently unclip the clips in the back to get the whole unit open. From here there are two methods that I tried to fix my issue. The first was a much shorter term fix. Before doing this though look at the bottom half of the unit. You'll see a white bowl, a little computer piece, a black cradle looking piece of plastic laying across and dipping into the bowl, and two wheel looking pieces at the top (under the computer piece) and right side of the bowl. Remember how the bowl sits in the housing and remember how the cradle piece is sitting. Now for the root of the problem. Upon opening the housing you will probably notice a good amount of white powder. Believe it or not, that powder used to be part of the bottom of the joystick and the bowl. It just grinds down over time and games like Mario Party and Super Smash Brothers take a real toll on these joysticks. The ground up plastic can make a joystick feel crunchy as you use it as it takes away the smoothness of the inside and basically clogs it up. Clean out the dust, but do not inhale it... Also keep the two wheel pieces as untouched and clean as possible. They're vital to a working joystick. You can remove and clean up the little cradle piece too. Check that piece for signs of wear and tear. None of mine had any issues with the cradle pieces. once you are done with that put the bottom of the joystick housing back together. Now for the top.
You should now be looking at the stick itself. You should see another little black plastic piece that is prevented from popping off the stick by the bottom of the stick itself (what I call the hammer. The hammer should also have a small little ball shape in the middle of it so notice that too) Then you should see a plastic ring, a spring, then finally the top of the joystick housing. Turn the black plastic piece so it pops off the stick. Be careful not to loose the plastic ring that will probably fall right off. Clean up the black plastic piece and the stick itself. Also check the top of the housing for plastic dust and what not(I used a little water on a Q-Tip followed by a lint free cloth). Now with your housing and pieces cleaned up, here's where things get different depending on which of the two techniques I tried you want to use. Both of these techniques involves trying to fill space that has been created by the plastic grinding away. These joysticks were poorly designed, but are quite precise, so I feel like trying to fix them is worth the time and effort. The first one is a short term solution.
This one is commonly called the tape method and it is quick to do, but has a big downside that I'll get to. First get yourself a roll of tape. The best tape to use for this is something like Scotch tape or some other thinner type of tape. Duck tape is too thick. Now for the tricky part. Get a pair of good scissors and cut two strips of tape. The length may vary, but I aimed for around 5mm with a with of 3mm on my very worn sticks. Take a look at the stick. You'll see the part where your thumb rests, a ball, a small neck, and then the hammer. Tightly wrap your first piece of tape around the neck between the ball and hammer. Now you may want to put the top part of the joystick all back together before doing the second part, so hopefully you paid attention to how the thing is put together. If not an the order is stick goes into the top part of housing and rotates so it locks. Then the larger circle on the spring goes against the underside of the top piece of the housing. The little plastic ring rests on the top of the spring. Getting the black piece back on requires you to push down on the spring. You should be able to have the hammer go through the middle. Once you see that rotate the black piece so it and the hammer look like a funky cross. The ends of the black piece should rest on the plastic ring quite well with the end pieces hanging off. Back to your tape. Take the second piece of tape and tightly wrap it around the hammer. Now assemble the joystick. Keep in mind that the cradle resting in the bowl and the black piece attached to the stick should form a + inside the bowl with the up/downaxis being near the wheel under the computer parts. If it doesn't fit snug, you may need to rotate the black piece attached to the joystick and the stick itself. Be careful it does not unlock otherwise you'll probably have to reassemble the top part of the housing. After you have screwed in the black screw test it out. It should be less loose than it was before. In this case, bulking up the hammer can eliminate the space, but in some cases (like 1 of my controllers), it's not enough due to the sheer amount of eroded plastic. Depending on how much plastic has been eaten away, you may need more than or less tape than I used. As I mentioned before, this is a short term fix. The tape will wear out pretty quickly. That is really the biggest downfall to this method. The tape can start coming off inside the housing and get to a point where you must open it up and replace the tape. That can happen well before the tape is actually worn out. The plus side is for short term use, this technique can close the empty space enough that the stick will feel much tighter. The tape around the neck will also help keep the stick propped up in the housing if the black piece has worn down too. For long term use though I have two things that I'm doing.
First of all I happened to stumble upon two Nintendo 64 controllers at a flea market recently. These two have joysticks in excellent shape so I started doing an easy maintenance on them. What you'll need for this is a screwdriver and some kind of plastic safe grease. Personally I am using white lithium grease, but I hear that ceramic grease works very well and lasts longer. As I mentioned before, the wear and tear on these joysticks largely comes from the bowl getting ground up into plastic dust. While putting an end to that wear is not possible to my knowledge, there is a way to drastically slow it down. What you will want to do is take apart the controller and joystick housing as described above. There is not much of a need to take apart the top of the housing though other than making sure it's clean. What you'll want to do is use a toothpick, Q-Tip, or other small object and grease certain areas of the housing. The most important thing in greasing is this. DO NOT GET ANY GREASE ON EITHER OF THE WHEEL PARTS ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE BOWL. IT WILL SERIOUSLY DAMAGE IT. Areas you do want to grease include the inside of the bowl (but not too much as it can spill out and onto the wheel part), The bottom and top of the black plastic cradle piece inside the bowl, where that plastic cradle sits on the edge of the bowl, the hammer or the joystick, and the little ball at the bottom of the hammer. Doing this has made my joysticks nice and smooth again and is an important part to the more long term solution. What it does for the controller is reduce the grind of the joystick and bowl, which is an amazing thing. I plan on checking on the grease after a month has passed to see if it needs reapplying. Again, I hear ceramic grease lasts longer. From what I've seen and read this is a great easy to do maintenance that will keep your original joystick working great longer. However, it is only a preventative and will not fix a joystick.
I've heard of a few different ways to go about more of a long term fix for the wiggly joystick. I've heard of ways of altering the stick itself if the little ball at the end is overly worn, but haven't had a need to do it yet, so I can't share my experiences with that. The way that I have gone about repairing these sticks with a long term approach in mind is as follows. Make note that this is not a fast fix and patience and some precision is required to do the job right. If you ever happen to get your hands on a newish Nintendo 64 controller take a look at the white bowl compared to that of one with a loose joystick. You will easily see that the bowl from the controller with the loose stick appears deeper. That is where the problem is and bringing the bowl back to it's former self is the goal. For this fix I used some plastic safe epoxy, a toothpick, a thin tipped sharpie, a dremel, sandpaper, a Q-Tip, and a lot of patience.
What you will want to do first is take apart the controller and joystick as described above. Once you have the white bowl removed from the bottom part of the housing you'll want to think about how much epoxy you are going to need. You should know how loose your joystick is and if you have a stick that is in good shape, it's not a bad idea to kind of eyeball it. Apply a small amount of epoxy into the bowl. I used the toothpick and Q-Tip to do this. You still want to bowl to be concave in the middle. How much you need is going to depend on how messed up the bowl is. Be careful not to get any on those wheel parts! Let the epoxy harden. Mine was good to go in about 4 hours. Now is where patience becomes a virtue. Attach a small amount of sandpaper to the end of the sharpie and smooth out the epoxy by gently sanding. Don't go too much yet. You're just trying to smooth it out for now. Reassemble the joystick housing only. See how the stick is. Is it still loose? If so you'll want to carefully add more and wait. Does it get stuck? Not a big deal. What you need to do here is either slowly sand down the epoxy or carefully use a dremel at low speed to do the same. Sand it again afterwords to smooth it out. If it's still getting stuck you can actually sand the bottom of the cradle a little bit without hurting it. If you go too much it will snap so only do this if you feel confident. Once the joystick feels good to you, grease it up as described above. This will not only slow the wear and tear again, but it will help the hammer slide on the epoxy better. I've used this method on two joysticks now and both are working great.
I've heard of other ways of doing the longer term fix such as super glue instead of epoxy and I'm sure that works fine too, but I found the epoxy pretty easy to work with. It's a shame that these joysticks have the issues that they have, but at least there are ways of making them last longer and even repairing them. I honestly don't know why Nintendo didn't have the insides of these things greased to begin with, but it is what it is. I can't guarantee that these methods will work for everyone and I do not recommend the epoxy fix to anyone who does not know what they are doing with these joysticks. I did these repairs about 2 weeks ago and so far everything has been working great. At the time I had no intention of doing a blog on it, so sorry that I don't have any pictures or video to help. The good news is both the tape and epoxy fixes can be found on Youtube if you need a visual guide. My next blog will be looking at some other alternatives to repairing that I stumbled across in my quest to revive my Nintendo 64's controllers! Thanks for reading!
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