How STICKS Are SABOTAGING Speedrunners (Stick Crisis History)

back in 2003 the Nintendo 64 was discontinued never to be manufactured again but what nobody understood at the time is that Nintendo had just set off a ticking Time Bomb something that years later would threaten the entire existence of speedr running on the N64 so under this major threat of having to go outside speedrunners have been w ing A desperate War trying to Halt this problem before time runs out and it's all because of sticks yes believe it or not the N64 analog sticks have been the subject of a massive rabbit hole and countless controversies but before you can really understand the problem we need to take a look at the Rival of the N64 the PS1 here we have the PS1 controller the analog sticks are made with a cheap component called a potentiometer now ever since the PS1 potentiometers have been used on almost every controller including the modern consoles the N64 is an exception with a completely different type of stick it's more expensive to manufacture made with Optical discs this means that it's actually more precise than any stick you'll find on a modern controll rer and it's even immune to the famous drift problem that people are always whining about on Modern consoles so for many N64 games like Super Mario 64 speedr Runners demand the Precision that only these sticks can provide at first there was no problem but eventually speedr Runners really started to discover the ail's heel of the N64 stick durability these sticks are made out of plastic so they wear down rapidly especially when you're a speedrunner no life in Mario for 10 hours a day now when these sticks wear down they'll become loose they'll become wobbly and The Notches around the edge of the stick will stop working properly so in the 2010s with speedr running becoming more popular no new sticks made in over a decade and nobody able to replicate the original stick it was becoming unid voidable this was going to be a problem Zing just as planned [ __ ] controllers just go flying off like you know just serious money I don't have money dude I can't keep buying these controllers with the stick Crisis coming into full effect speedr Runners would have to treat sticks as a scarce resource many players would begin to open up their controller on a monthly basis to lubricate the internal components this does actually help to make the sticks last longer but even then they only last for around 1 to 2 years so it would become increasingly common for speedrunners to be browsing eBay looking to stockpile controllers but on an eBay listing it's almost impossible to tell the condition of a stick and of course most eBay sellers were not speedrunners and had no idea how to test them to speedrun standards buying a stick from eBay was largely a game of luck very often players would order a controller only to realize they had gotten the short end of the stick this whole phenomenon even became known as the eBay Lottery amongst speedrunners but within this chaos some entrepreneurial speedrunners would spot a business opportunity thus came the age of the stick Black Market one of the key figures in this market was Punk aan a legendary world record holder in Mario 64 so as the stick crisis was unfolding he would begin to amass a large Reserve stockpile of sticks there's no way I can answer that question I don't know how many controllers I have like new conditioned to like really good probably like around 100 or some [ __ ] bad stick bad cosmetic shape then I probably have 200 plus many of these he would keep for his own personal use but many of them he would personally test and grade with a rating out of 10 he would even use a home brew application developed for the N64 specifically to test the quality of a stick and once pun had personally attested to a stick he would list a controller for sale within the underground speedrun markets and speedrun conventions like Games Done Quick pun was able to build an Empire of sticks by offering this invaluable service and by this point sticks were actually becoming somewhat of a status symbol even a point of class divide between those who had access to s and those who didn't if you had just gotten a fresh 10 out of 10 stick from Punk it was something you were going to be flexing about on Twitter and on Discord brand new stick I won't even move the stick cuz it's so perfect it's so tight however there was still no escaping the underlying problem speedr Runners were burning through these sticks faster than ever and still no new sticks were being produced if the stick problem was was left unsolved it was clear that sticks would only become more rare until the logical end point the death of N64 speedr running as we knew it but then array of [Music] Hope the steel [Music] stick enter steel sticks stick custom machined out of stainless steel it has been fully replaced by a stainless steel bowl so I don't have to suffer from this [ __ ] anymore behind the scenes an extremely skilled machinist by the name of lonus Hoffman had been working on a solution and by 2016 it was coming to fruition he would unveil steel sticks a far more durable stick but still matching or even exceeding the original Precision in March 2016 lonus would send out the first prototype to bny one of the goats of Mario 64 and overall the initial feedback was very positive but these steel sticks were not something that was produced that you could just order each stick required a meticulous and manual process and underwent extensive testing to get one you would have to join a wait list and wait for an indefinite amount of time until lonus offered you a stick very quickly this weight list would Skyrocket to around 500 people and lonus had to close the weight list to have any chance of catching up the steel sticks were sold for around $150 now this might sound ridiculous to your average gamer but for a speedrunner it's an absolute bargain they would actually be saving money in the long run not having to buy new sticks and for many players they just wanted to get their sanity back after all they'd had to endure with sticks although unfortunately for those who were not lucky enough to get on the wait list it would drive them even more insane with envy and jealousy thank you so much for the steel stick how about stop [ __ ] tweeting and practice [ __ ] with your steel stick [ __ ] Ram a [ __ ] steel stick up that ass dude [ __ ] that [ __ ] I'm so [ __ ] triggered about that like there's people that could really use those things man however lonus was continuing to refine the process the ultimate goal was to bring the steel stick to mass Market allowing every speedrunner to get their stick the solution was finally here and it was Within Reach [Music] yes the still stick destroy Z oopes crash it in the end the steel sticks were not destined to be the Savior everyone had hoped there was actually a number of factors that might have doomed the steel stick from the beginning for example some of the parts still had to be harvested and refurbished from original controllers so having to buy these donor controllers in bulk manually taking them apart and refurbishing them this was all very timec consuming not to mention the fact that lonus was basically on his own to make these sticks he would struggle for around 3 years to get through this weight list ultimately completing around 400 orders by 2019 but by this point he seemed to have had enough and he disappeared into the night without leaving any final updates on social media the weit list was never to be opened again and steel sticks would become an ultra rare highly sought after item they would easily sell for over $500 on the occasion that one appeared on eBay and Desperation began to kick in for those who weren't able to get one if anybody hasn't steel stick I'm just going to shoot my shot man money is not an issue I'll give you all my money I'll give you my house and a [ __ ] and anybody that typed anything about steel stick I went straight to their DMS hey bro I'd literally [ __ ] you for a steel stick and give you $300 dude I tried I [ __ ] cried I was so desperate but steel sticks had proven it was possible to make high quality replacement sticks and now with a massive Gap left in the market many competitors would step into the Stick Arena over the following years but be warned it seems that with the death of Steel sticks a curse was Unleashed that would haunt almost all future sticks emerging right after the steel stick was the enco stick in February 2016 this was a project on Kickstarter started by a man called Andy and he just wanted to recreate the sticks out of plastic like The Originals so I got a new one scanned it and then I 3D printed a prototype it only took 3 days for the kickstarter to meet its goal of $88,000 and at this point Andy seemed to think it would be a relatively easy task with his 3D scans and his plastic injection machine I can exactly replicate the original parts as they were made 13 years ago he actually estimated it would only take around 3 months and the sticks would be shipped to buyers by may but may came and went and still no sticks they had been delayed until September then delayed again until the end of the year then delayed again until the next year the prototypes for the enko stick just kept having more and more problems the sticks would get stuck in certain positions they'd wear down even faster than the originals and the gears were just too precise for the Machinery to handle and then eventually over a year after the original ship date Andy would state that he was back at square one and this update would be his last Andy disappeared with no further updates and no sticks delivered the enko stick went down as a classic example of a failed Kickstarter until surprisingly 5 years later in 2022 Andy emerged again with with one more update he apologized and said that he had saved up enough money to offer everyone a refund so definitely respect to him for coming back after all those years and offering refunds but as we'll see he was far from the last person to underestimate the difficulty of replicating these sticks in 2018 we saw the rise of the prestige stick another attempt to recreate the sticks out of steel so soon enough a small number of the initial buyers would begin to receive these sticks and one of them was Liam who is one of the most well-known Mario 64 speedrunners so what did he think about it well he absolutely loved it I love Prestige Stick Dude way to kill another [ __ ] run hope that guy lives a long healthy life thanks for forever [ __ ] my runs dude now considering that Liam was able to set world records with the prestige stick it can't have been that bad but apparently they weren't quite as well tuned as they should have been and they weren't quite as good as the original steel stick and so the prestige would quickly become Liam's goto excuse for his mistakes I'm in the process of getting a steel stick so Prestige will be smashed with a hammer on stream soon I will take a [ __ ] on this the Prestige stick and put it on my how much of this was actually the stick's fault and how much was just Liam coping is still debated to this day but what's not up for debate is the fact that Prestige would fail to meet production demands and many buyers would go through months of delays without receiving the orders they had paid for the stick is called a Prestige stick you can't even get it anymore cuz the guy realized he was making such a [ __ ] product that he dipped out and actually scammed hundreds of people who are still on the [ __ ] weight list today and it's just deteriorated to a point where it's just like a [ __ ] shell like it's just a just a [ __ ] stick that's going to snap at any point this all came to a Tipping Point in July 2020 Prestige bizarrely announced that they were going to auction off a stick on eBay now this really angered a lot of people why were they auctioning off a stick when countless buyers were still waiting on their order well as it turns out it was because Prestige was shutting down the project cancelling all orders and all the money from the auction would go towards refunding people so you might be wondering how much did the stick sell for well I wasn't able to find the exact number but here is a screenshot from the auction with 7 Days remaining yes the bidding had gotten up to 4,500 Canadian dollars that's just how desperate people were getting at this point as far as far as I can tell Prestige seems to have ultimately issued refunds and then shut down the project it would mostly go down as another failed attempt and only about 40 Prestige sticks were ever produced but then in 2021 something happened that took everyone off guard Nintendo released the Nintendo switch online plus expansion pack s this will be the first time in 20 years that Nintendo has made an N64 controller but things didn't quite go as planned this is where all the magic is and I can already tell you it just it feels different something feels very different compared to normal um all right so I'm sure someone's going to ask right away and there is your answer this is a potentiometer based system they have eliminated the optical encoders this was yet another false hope and once again speedr Runners would have to rely on third party Replacements but in the meantime a few of thirdparty sticks had been in the works and one of them was called the pro stick this was an attempt to democratize Sticks by making the files open source and having the sticks 3D printed in theory this could have been a good idea even if these sticks were not too durable they'd be easy and cheap to replace by anyone with a 3D printer but in practice these sticks would break far too easily you were actually at risk of losing your world record speedrun by having the stick snap on you in the middle of a run ultimately the pro stick didn't really seem to go anywhere yet another stick that was in the works was called The Nomad stick there's not too much to say about this one it never got to the point of being sold as an actual product but it has to be mentioned because in 2022 prototype units were sent out to four players and one of them lucky players was Luna jump who finally got his Redemption bro I've been [ __ ] it up every time but somehow I'm following through and it's working dude this is all [Music] the it's all the stick I swear to God man there have been some whisperings of the Nomad stick returning but from what we can see right now it's seems to be pretty dead in 2022 we had another stick called retick and it was made by a company called retek but this one was a total disaster for one the sticks themselves seem to have a lot of issues including the fact that they would snap and break oh my God it just [ __ ] broke off with the [ __ ] screw in it but if this wasn't bad enough orders were also delayed for months on end and by the end of 2022 retek pulled what seems to have been an outright exit scam they went dark entirely totally stop fulfilling orders and many customers were left out of pocket so now let's talk about a stick that had more success than most if you remember from earlier bny is the player that received the first steel stick prototype back in the day so starting in 2020 he would set out to create his own stick made out of steel which he called Brew sticks Benny had to burn through a lot of money going through failed prototypes oh what's this what's happening look something's gone wrong but eventually bny would Triumph he was able to make a great stick which got a lot of good reviews from the initial buyers Brew sticks became the Tor of the town and even Ben's former Rivals suddenly came crawling back trying to get one what other top Runners are interested in using Bruce sticks I know pun wants one he just tweeted out saying is anyone selling one uh which is strange I don't know why he wouldn't just ask me it's because he talk loads of [ __ ] about me and now he doesn't want to he doesn't want to swallow his pride and ask me wait what I didn't mean that I didn't mean that take that but brw sticks would not be free of controversy soon enough bny would find himself failing to keep up with production and buyers were left for months even over a year without receiving their orders and allegedly Benny would not take criticism well and he'd be swift to ban you or just ignore you despite paying a premium price of $300 not you ban you little rat and apparently B has always been very cryptic and secretive about his sticks whenever someone asked any details about the Brew sticks he would just say that they were made with his secret sauce Vinny personally greases it with his ball sweat so overall it seems that bny is slowly attempting to fulfill the orders and it seems that you can get a refund out of him if you pester him enough but this is still an ongoing situation so finally this brings me to two more sticks that are currently in the market today the oudini stick and the tow stick these are generally the recommended options at the time of this video if you're lucky enough to get one yeah I have oudini stick and ball and uh I mean just look at this thing man incredibly these sticks have most avoided controversy but they've had to make a few compromises in particular you usually cannot buy them as a full complete unit you have to buy the individual parts and it's up to you to put it all together and make sure it's calibrated and yes these sticks sell for hundreds of dollars they immediately sell out on the occasion that there's any stock and they're targeted by scalpers but they are good and they're the best options we have right now so at the time of this video in early 2024 where are we at in terms of the stick problem on the horizon right now there's actually yet another stick created by someone called Rocker gaming he's a longtime stick Enthusiast and he's calling it project Renaissance he says that he's already invested tens of thousands and he thinks he can reproduce the entire stick with good availability so who knows he could be the one to completely Sol solve the problem or maybe it'll be another disaster only time will tell but for now the crisis continues it will only be officially over when the stick is fully reproduced to a high standard with high availability and we can't truly say that the stick is preserved until we have a good stick that's open source in any case we have to give big credit to all those who have tried over the years and if you've got any ideas about this make sure to stick a comment down below this is your boy retro signing [Music] out

Channel: retromeister

Views: 299,889

Keywords: nintendo 64, super mario 64, speedrunning, manufacturing, cnc machining, 3d printing, business, scams, scammers, rage, documentary, speedrunner rage, gaming, goldeneye, perfect dark, ocarina of time, majoras mask, history, progression, cheaters

Id: yzq1IXt79SQ

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024