/vr/ - Retro Games

Hey /vr/. I performed an experiment today and it worked really well so I thought I'd share. I had this cheap knock off Cirka snes controller. If you've ever used one they feel just awful, everything is super stiff. If you've ever wondered, the 'stiffness' of buttons is related to how much force is required to depress the plungers on the rubber pads beneath them. I took it apart wondering if there may be a way to reduce how much force would be required, therefore bringing it down to how effortless and loose the actual SNES controller is.

I took a knife and made incisions on the rubber pads near the base of each plunger; one at every cardinal. The L and R plungers were quite a but bigger so I cut out entire squares instead. It was fairly simple and testing as I went they definitely felt easier to depress. I put it back together and fucking wow, it's a massive difference. It's still not quite OEM level (nothing will fix the cheaper plastics), but the stiffness is near entirely gone. I can roll the dpad without any effort, the buttons require hardly any force, it's more than useable now.

So if anyone happens to have some shitty stiff controls I highly recommend giving this a try, especially if you dont have any OEM controllers at all. This simple fix turns a 10 dollar controller into a 30 dollar one