What will we do when every 1st party N64 controller is gone?

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I'm amazed that nobody has simply taken measurements and manufactured a metal stick by now

[DerekG52]

I'm amazed that nobody has simply taken measurements and manufactured a metal stick by now

Someone somewhere posted about having titanium replacement parts made. I've been looking for an answer to this problem as well. Is it possible to put something like epoxy to resurface the stick and bottom dome piece to relengthen them? Any idea when patents run out on the controller shape so a 3rd party can make a same shape replica like they do for other systems? The 3rd party's wouldn't be so annoying if it wasn't for their god awful shape.

[lwcook]

Apparently, it's pretty easy to shove the internals of a 3rd party Superpad into the shell of a 1st party controller. It's also fairly easy to then switch out the 3rd party's joystick with that of a gamecube controller's c-stick.

All of this is just research at the moment (but it seems each has been done before, I just haven't found and how to or pictures of a completed project.) I'm tracking down all the parts to do this so hopefully I'll have a permanent solution so I don't have to buy a new controller every few years.

[Visc.]

Alright I just finished restoring my joystick after some trial and error. It has very minimal looseness (maybe 3mm up and down and 2mm left and right), I'll get to that later.

I put a small amount of 2 part epoxy into the bowl area where the joystick actually grinds the plastic into dust. Once dried I sanded it down until it wasn't too tight so that it returns to center. It's a little loose because I had to make sure the spring would send it back to center, and so that I can have fluid motion when I want to tilt the joystick and not force it all the way to one side.

A problem I ran into, and that you should be weary of before trying is that the joystick may mess up. I was playing around in super smash after my first trial and what happened was that I couldn't Up Smash, and after a while the joystick was permanently on up tilt. I had to keep resetting the stick by holding start+L+R. This is why I sanded down the epoxy a little bit more so that it wasn't too tight for the spring to send it back to center.

It's been working flawlessly for a few hours, no problems yet.