I’ve had a snazzy Young Link-themed custom GameCube controller for a while, and I recently upgraded it. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on the blog before, so here’s what it looked like until recently:
And here’s what it looks like now:
While the controller’s motherboard is a genuine Nintendo one, the shell is a generic 3rd party. These have to be modified to fit OEM boards – but I needed a pink shell (and later a transparent blue back) for the aesthetic I was going for. The art is by Justin Wharton, who has done fantastic art with a vaporwave aesthetic for the whole cast of Ultimate. The skin was printed by MuffinBros (I would link them, but currently their shop is down). The text on it just translates to “Child Link”, which is what you’d expect. The buttons are a bunch of the cheap third party ones I found on eBay, but they work well. The control stick, however, is a aluminum Xbox One stick; I prefer concave control sticks to the native GameCube stick. It just feels like my thumb stays on it better.
At Low Tide City (way back in October), there were a lot of controller vendors selling repairs, buttons, and other services. I was curious about my controller, and asked one of them for the free evaluation. After about a minute of fiddling with my controller, the vendor handed it back to me and said “there’s a medium amount of snapback”. (Snapback is when you let go of the control stick, and instead of moving to the neutral position it moves past the neutral position, towards the opposite direction, and then finally back to neutral.) I thought, uh oh, I am in the bracket, and I don’t really have time to have this fixed. The vendor offered a snapback capacitor installation, but I had to decline because my bracket was on that day, which I obviously needed my controller for.
I never noticed any snapback in-game until this was pointed out to me, but I could see it when I tried to test for it. Smashing left made my character dash left, but also turn right after the dash sometimes. I can’t think of any particular instance where I know that the snapback caused a misinput, but all the same I knew that I couldn’t let it go unaddressed. For such a precise game, controller malfunctions are unacceptable.
Snapback capacitors are solder-on modifications that can prevent snapback inputs, which is super cool, but they require a controller reset (by pressing X+Y+Start for 3 seconds) every time the controller is plugged in. This is rather annoying, but I had heard of “resetless” snapback capacitors, and did some research into my options. I decided to go with Good Company Controller’s send-in option, and I very satisfied with their responsiveness and service. They also noticed some potentiometer degradation, and offered to fix it for a small additional fee, which I accepted. I highly recommend Good Company Controllers if you’re in the market for a resetless snapback capacitor or other repairs (and live in the US).
The following is what snapback looks like on an oscilloscope. You can clearly see the red graph go past the green line, indicating that the controller is inputting the opposite direction after I had
And one resetless snapback capacitor later…
No snapback! I can notice it in-game too, no more turning around after dashing. Turnaround specials/b-reversing/wavebouncing feel very different, too. I can’t describe how, but the inputs feel like they make more sense. Like I have to be more deliberate to execute those techniques.
If the dates on the Instagram posts were any indication, I actually did all this (the different backplate and snapback capacitor) a while ago, but just never wrote a blog post about it, but I figured I should at some point. I would like to get better buttons at some point (those fancy resin ones look real cool) but for now I’m pretty happy with my custom GameCube controller!