First off, sorry for the crappy pictures. I took them on my desk with my phone and bad lighting.
Anyway here's some pics of an old cube controller
lots of surface mounted components to the board and the innards of a controller.
close up of the analog stick and PCB manufacturer. The stick and moving parts are plastic with what is probably an aluminum housing soldered to the PCB.
C stick analog inpput. It's mounted to a smaller circular PCB from the same people as the mian PCB and attached via a 4 wire ribbon cable behind the main PCB
back of the main PCB. You can see the rumble motor soldered to the board, the ribbon cable for the c stick board on the left and the slider switches for the L and R buttons to detect how far in you push them. The black standoffs with the yellow top are where the contacts are for when you depress the shoulders all the way in.
here is the rubber pad that sits under the buttons on the right of the controller ( A B X Y ). There are some "ripples" in the rubber that acts as the spring and pushes the button back up after you depress it. Over time this, and anything on the side of the plastic buttons, will make the button less springy and responsive.
this is the underside of the top of the controller. the buttons are just free floating keyed plastic pieces that depress the rubber mat. The mat has conductive circles in it that record an input to the microchip when the circuit is completed via a depress. You can see the conductive circles in the middle under the start button and on the right of the picture which is under the D pad.
Here are the pictures of the new smash edition GameCube controller
the new board has some significant changes. The blue 3 way capacitor (at least i think it was one) is replaced with a tiny square one. The alanlog stick input housings are made of plastic instead of metal. I think the material for the sticks in the input housing is a different material but it's hard to tell. My hope is that it is, or if its the same type of plastic is a more refined one that wont get dead zones as easily. Also very notable is the very reduced amount of components to the right of the microchip. I wonder if the new layout and reduced components might mean new firmware, which could mean faster signal time and thus a better input response on these new controller.
the analog stick input housing is plastic and it looks like the center stick is solid now and doesn't have that hole in the middle. i wonder if they used a different process like injection molding which could mean higher density and less dead zone creation. Also not the same branding as the old controller.
C stick housing same as analog stick. The two buss wires replace what used to be integrated circuitry to the board, probably to help reduce costs.
The backs are basically the same except that the motor on the new controller has a black and red wire instead of black and white.
I liked seeing this. The rubber pad has some mechanical upgrades. The rubber is a tad thicker ( got out the calipers and it's something like .002 inches) which means more resilience and a springier feel. As well as a new design for the rib area that has more stiffness making button presses feel more tactile or forceful. Feels more "real" for lack of a better expression.
Bottom side of top of controller is basicly a clone from the origonal. Same free floating keys buttons.
TLDR: The new Smash Bros. edition GameCube controller has better build quality that makes it worth it for anyone who will seriously use a GC controller to play Smash 4.
*Note : I do not know how the custom controllers made by third parties are, or what internals they have, so this is just a comparison of one my my old GC controllers and the new one i got at midnight release.
I Hope you enjoy the post
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