Which Wireless N64 Controller is Better? 8BitDo vs NSO

I got this really cool 8-bit dough mod kit in the mail this is a DIY wireless controller PCB for an oem N64 controller basically it turns an oem N64 controller into a Bluetooth wireless controller I'm a big fan of wireless controllers that are as OEM looking as possible this is the Nintendo switch online N64 controller and I really like this because obviously it was made by Nintendo but it looks exactly like an original N64 controller and the cool thing about the Nintendo switch online and hopefully the 8-Bit dough wireless controller PCB is that both of these controllers should work with the blue retro adapters that I have this is the Retro time blue retro adapter for the N64 this allows you to use Bluetooth controllers with a real N64 so I'm just going to install this 8-bit dough PCB into one of my controllers and we can compare it to the NSO controller when using it with a blue retro adapter pretty minimal packaging which is okay in my opinion comes with instructions and how to install it comes with a USB type-c cable which is nice so that means it's type c for charging the battery comes with this little tiny screwdriver this is the PCB itself in this oh it's a nice black PCB which is pretty cool so this is the main PCB that goes inside of the controller there's the battery on the back of this PCB so that's where the battery for this unit is it comes with an included replacement thumbstick so this is what's called a GameCube style thumbstick as opposed to the normal N64 style thumbstick like the NSO controller has the N64 style thumbstick this looks like the GameCube controller instead but it's cool that they include a replacement joystick and also this is this is using a hall effect sensor so there shouldn't be any sort of drift or anything because this does not use potentiometers and last but not least is the receiver this actually plugs into the memory card slash Rumble pack spot and this is what is going to transmit the Bluetooth data to our blue retro adapter this is also where the USBC charging port is so that's pretty cool so it looks like it charges through the memory card slot charges the battery through the memory card slot there's a bunch of additional buttons here because this is also compatible with the Nintendo switch so it has some pairing buttons and things so you could use it with the switch if you want to now this s slash D okay so the little switch lets you change the input mode from compatible with the Nintendo switch or D input okay that's enough talking let's get this installed into an actual controller this PCB is going to go into my childhood jungle green N64 controller I've actually had this controller taken apart for years now probably I don't know 15 years or so and I kind of just took it apart further and cleaned everything with soap and water I'm not going to go over how to disassemble everything but you need to remember to remove the rubber membranes from the Z Button as well as the L and R buttons that's pretty much everything you need from the old PCB while we're here somebody asked me if this new hall effect joystick might fit in an oem controller they should I don't know electrically if they work but they seem to be the same size and the connector is the same number of pins so if you want to buy this just to test it in your OEM GameCube controller I'm not going to do that but it might work I'm not sure actually it looks like it wants to assemble everything in the top side of the controller so we need to put all the buttons back in okay that's all the buttons put back in looks like we may need to bend some of these contacts uh like the original it helps if you have the original controller nearby so you can kind of see how things are supposed to go in here I sort of wish that this part was done for you already so you don't have to bend these because this doesn't really feel great let's attach the thumb stick here it really only goes in one way okay I'm gonna screw the controller in here okay then the Z button contact gets pushed into here then the blue rubber piece uh what okay this part is pretty frustrating I guess and then I press this whole thing down God this blue thing won't stay in okay okay now I need to do the same thing with the L and R buttons just gotta find the right ones to go in the right side and then that goes down that part's really annoying but I think I got it now I just need to put these in I don't think there are any other screws that need to be connected to the actual PCB so let's put these the top part and make sure you line up everything oh I forgot one piece actually inside of the bag with the PCB is this little rubber stopper thing that little rubber thing goes under the PCB now I should be able to line everything up here and put it on five minutes later I'm having a hard time lining these pieces up together well that's why this piece came out ah okay this this little square here is probably saying don't put any wires there because that's where the hinge of the Z button is oh yeah way better okay I'm just testing all the buttons first before I secure everything up so this this is the right button R button see this work the left bumper seems like something is stuck in it okay getting this controller back together took a lot longer than I thought I was going to I kept having trouble with a wire on either I think it was the left bumper here getting stuck in the plastic but now all the screws are back together so let's go ahead and plug in the receiver thing into the rumble pack slots and that's pretty much the whole controller put together now before I start using the new controller I figured I would do a feel test between the new epido controller an oem controller with decent stick and it's not perfect but it's decent and the Nintendo switch online N64 controller so let's get a feel for the original controller okay the face buttons d-pad is a little mushy mushier than I remember on the original controller and the L and R buttons are kind of mushy also okay so I got a feel for the original let's do the 8-Bit dough controller so the L and R buttons are just as mushy which I guess is a good thing the d-pad is pretty much the same mushiness I guess I guess that's true um I guess that makes sense because I'm using the original uh rubber membranes from an original controller same with the face buttons so far the d-pad the face buttons and the L and R buttons and the Z button I guess feel about the same an interesting thing to point out too while I'm here is take a look at the OEM controller gate okay so it's not really um what is it octagon it's not a perfect octagon the Northeast Southeast Southwest and Northwest are stretched out a little bit now compared to the 8-Bit doe GameCube style that is a more perfect octagon this is sort of an issue that has plagued some GameCube controller replacement thumbsticks for the N64 the gates will not feel the same as an original controller okay let's feel the Nintendo switch online controller so I know the the internals of the Nintendo switch online controller are not really the same I know the thumbstick um I think maybe Rocker gaming did a deep dive and the mechanism inside of the thumbstick is different but it looks like the gate is similar as far as how this is going to feel when you move it the d-pad I think it feels worse yeah I mean not like the N64 d-pad feels good I know honestly most games you don't really use the d-pad the Nintendo switch online one for some reason feels worse I do kind of like the l r buttons about the same I mean they don't really feel any different same with the Z button and the face buttons are the same too so it's interesting to note that the 8bido controller the receiver the Bluetooth receiver fever it does stick out from the bottom of the controller but not as deep as a rumble pack on an original controller and then versus the Nintendo switch online controller obviously the Nintendo switch online controller does not stick out at all versus the apito controller sticks out a little bit more so a quick recap of the field test they don't really feel different as far as the face buttons the d-pad and the L and R buttons with the exception that the Nintendo switch online d-pad probably is the worst feeling and we know that the gate is a different shape on the GameCube style 8-bit dough controller before we do any actual testing let's talk about how to pair the controller with the blue retro adapter to turn the controller on we need to press the start button and then you can see that there will be a blue LED flashing on the receiver here if you want to turn the controller off you have to hold the start button down until you don't see the light on anymore then the controller is off so let's leave the controller off and turn on our N64 you can see that by default the blue retro adapter will go into pairing mode there's a screen flashing LED that means it's looking for a controller so now if we turn the controller on in order to pair it with our blue retro adapter we have to hold down this little radio wave button until the blue LED on the controller flashes really fast now the controller is in pairing mode sometimes the I I guess this doesn't mean the adapter is in pairing mode because it didn't automatically pair I've had this issue a couple of times oh never mind it did pair if you want to re-enable pairing mode on the blue retro adapter you've got to hold down this button in the front here until the LED turns green and starts flashing when the controller is actually paired the blue LED on the receiver will turn a solid blue and the light on the blue retro adapter will turn off this is pretty much the same process for pairing the Nintendo switch online controller one thing that is kind of annoying and this is probably a blue retro thing not really a problem with the controller is a after the controller is successfully paired if you turn the console off and back on again the blue retro adapter will forget about the controller and you'll have to pair it all over again the first test that we're going to do to compare these controllers is the controller test by Sani so now it's going to ask us to push the controller stick to different positions so we're going to press up and then a and then just kind of repeat through all these pictures the results of this test are going to be I guess like the end points of the actual controller stick inputs this first pass was with the stock N64 controller like I said mine is a little bit loose it's not 100 tight so these results are not going to be with a brand new OEM N64 controller but what we could do with this testing tool is if we press a it will show us some comparisons between a brand new original analog stick these different test results are just kind of showing you what you might expect from different aftermarket sticks so I think that this looks pretty good compared to this one here which is what an original analog stick is supposed to look like okay now let's do the same thing with the 8bit doe replacement stick this is sort of interesting now it says 84 for every position but if we actually look at the picture as you can see the bottom left corner there looks like it might go out farther than a stock controller I'll just cycle through to that picture yeah actually a lot of the corners kind of go out to the corner like the corners are further out on the API doe controller I know this is kind of like the test to to test an N64 stick I don't necessarily know if this is realistic like a realistic test so we're going to do some realistic tests but let's just do this test one last time for the Nintendo switch online controller okay I think the shape looks better I mean this shape looks better than the API doe controller although I had I had done the same test with the 8bit dough controller actually if you follow me on Twitter you can see how the first time I did the apito test I got a much better result than the one I got when I was doing this recording so this is the Nintendo switch online controller and it looks very similar to this original analog stick maybe just a little bit wider like I said I don't really trust these results that much in my opinion it will always come down to how it feels in games now it's time for what I'm going to call the real gamer test which is basically to play an FPS game and real Gamers Play Perfect Dark and not GoldenEye so the first test is with the OEM N64 controller I'm going to play the first level of perfect Arc and I'm gonna get a feel for how a real N64 controller is supposed to handle oh man it's been so long since I played an N64 FPS game still got it oh that inverted control okay so I think one important thing to point out is that I can kind of aim pretty decently I mean this is on the easiest difficulty but I can aim pretty decently without having to do the uh Crosshair Aim so I'm just kind of strafing around obviously I don't aim at design and stuff but I don't really have to think about how I'm aiming with this controller compared to Modern games I mean this is still not super enjoyable not really that that's not really part of this test but I guess it's important to get a benchmark geez a lot of these guys rip okay fine I can't beat this level I don't remember how to do it okay now I'm gonna repeat the same test basically get to the same spot in the level this time I'm going to be using the 8-Bit dough controller I definitely noticed that the outside edge of the controller is much more sensitive like when I try to look around it is very hard to aim at these guys versus with the OEM like did you see there it was like super sensitive like I could change change direction very quickly which is not particularly good which is not particularly good for a game like this where I don't know it's kind of more fun if you're it's a little more Run and Gun without having to aim I guess it would probably take some getting used to like I'm trying to play towards the center of the stick now instead of doing um instead of going all the way to the edge of the throw of the controller which is very kind of goofy takes a lot of getting used to it probably doesn't help that I have auto aim on if you're a Casual Gamer you're probably not gonna not turn auto aim on foreign it's even worse if you try to use it with the crosshairs I should have played on a harder difficulty I suppose it's better if you're trying to turn around really quickly it's pretty nice to be able to turn quickly around but I'm actively thinking about how I'm aiming stick which I don't know like I said it's probably just you have to get used to it if you really wanted to put an FPS with this controller yeah if you're trying to watch this it might be getting a little like I don't know seasick because it just whips around very quickly yeah no I think I've had enough I don't think this is the controller or the kit for you if you're specifically looking to play FPS games like golden eye or Perfect Dark okay just for hahas I'm gonna be using the Nintendo switch online controller now so this test is also blue retro but with the Nintendo switch online controller foreign I do kind of feel like this is better than the blue retro GameCube style stick uh I think it might have to do with how tall the thumbstick is um it's it's very similar to the obviously it's basically a replica of the OEM stick um so maybe that has effect is affecting my muscle memory more versus trying to learn a whole new way of playing these games I don't think it's perfect I mean I I don't see myself whipping around like I was with the uh well as much I do notice it a little bit but I don't think it's as bad as the GameCube style stick I am John Wick obviously these tests are not scientific I'm just going by my muscle memory I did play a lot of perfect dark when I was young because I have played it but obviously it does obviously that does come into play a little bit I'm familiar with this game how it kind of should feel with that being said I do feel like an oem controller is the best way to play FPS games but let's take a look at a different game that's not an FPS the last test that I'm going to do is a Super Mario walking test or if I can get Mario to just kind of tiptoe around here I'll just show you with the OEM N64 controller if you move the stick just a little bit Mario kind of tiptoes a little bit and I'm just going to kind of do that in every direction to see how difficult it is to maintain this tiptoeing this is not a perfect N64 controller it's not super tight or anything but you know it's doable I do have to try a little bit the resistance under the thumbstick there is a little bit of springiness but I I do kind of have to focus to get uh it's not like it's super hard but I have to focus and it also is Direction dependent as well I think that might have to do with the fact that my stick my OEM stick is not perfect but you know I could tiptoe to around 360 I guess without breaking the tiptoe but with an oem controller specifically it's about finding the dead zone like getting right outside of the Dead Zone where the stick does nothing and then finding a good pressure to get Mario to tiptoe it's not comfortable uh I don't really I guess I have to kind of try to do this all right that's enough tiptoeing let's just do some running around here um run through the castle Maybe [Music] how about the first one yeah we've got no problems controlling Mario [Music] ah this guy [Music] don't eat me [Music] [Music] that's lame oh man I'm having a hard time with this guy wow he he's talking about fighting me with honor and then he goes ahead and throws knee off the edge [Music] come on wow okay that's enough obviously with an oem controller I have no problem playing Super Mario okay now for the 8bit doe controller let's try to do the tiptoe test hmm I would say that the tip toe test is a lot harder uh the range that I can do the tiptoe is very narrow and the actual GameCube style thumbstick doesn't have as much tension as an oem controller does so this is the little tiny window that I have to do the crawl see if I can try real hard that that's really hard um really hard to do the tiptoe test but I mean other than that it feels fine to play let's do that first mission again I do feel like the directional input is more well that was the skill issue [Music] I do feel like the directional input is more uh there's like less range um like there's less [Music] gosh I did it again maybe it's not a skill issue [Music] like Mario doesn't move fluidly I guess if that makes any sense like I can't have I can't get Mario to go in between these angles he's kind of locked in and then that might have to do with the gate that might have to do with the shape of the gate kind of preventing me from going all the way into the middle of one of those angles yeah but it is sort of choppy and I don't really like that okay I'm having a hard time here well I did it I got my bomb okay let's try the same test with the Nintendo switch online and 64 Controller so let's do the tiptoe test oh yeah this is like the easiest controller of the three even better than the original controller to do the tip toe test uh still I have to watch the pressure but the it this controller is not worn in as badly as my OEM controller is so I have more of the controller dead zone or whatever the stick is less play in the center so and it seems to pick up almost immediately when I start moving in Direction so let's go and I don't notice that um I don't notice that hard angular movement I guess like I'm not locked into 45 degree angles I can move a little bit more fluidly let's just do the first map here yeah honestly for this game the Nintendo switch online controller is the best controller that I have it's better than the OEM controller that I have that's worn in a little bit it's infinitely better than the GameCube style stick from apido at least for this specific game not to say that the API doe controller is a bad controller obviously there's kind of two aspects to that controller there's the wireless functionality and then there's the hall effect GameCube style stick so it's not really fair to say that it's the 8bido controller and I don't know if it's really blue retro blue retro has been pretty good right because it's been a tender switch online controller also uses blue retro okay so Ironically in the Mario the Super Mario test the Nintendo switch online controller is probably the best controller of the three I've been doing these tests for a couple of days now and I've been posting some teasers on Twitter and by far the number one commented thing is how does the 8bit doe PCB work with an oem N64 stick I went through my controller collection and I ended up finding a pretty decent stock N64 stick there's no aftermarket parts or it's not lubed or anything I just want to see how this stick performs with the apido PCB okay out with the GameCube Style stick and in with the OEM style stick in the 8bit doe PCB there it is we have a stock thumbstick with the 8-Bit dough PCB I'm going to repeat all the tests that I did with the 8-Bit dough PCB with the GameCube style stick with the stock stick instead so first let's do the controller test benchmark whoa look at that see even the stock stick can have a pretty weird result in this benchmark test okay now it's time for the perfect dark test now that I'm playing this with the OEM stick and the epido PCB it seems kind of similar to the Nintendo switch online controller I don't know if that's uh the nature of just blue retro maybe there's something up with blue retro making the input more sensitive it is a little bit sensitive or at least I'm noticing it may be sensitive or it could just be this stock stick is different than the stock controller that I was using before I still don't really have to think about how I'm aiming I can kind of just walk around and not really have to use the targeting thing the more that I'm playing with this though the more that I'm realizing that I probably can't tell the difference between this and the Nintendo switch online controller and if I'm being honest now playing with this it could just be the nature of blue retro maybe there's some blue retro the blue retro adapter maybe needs to be I don't know tweaked a little bit so that the sensitivity is more like a stock controller I also figured out how to beat the first mission here in Perfect Dark okay let's do the tiptoe test here in Mario 64. yeah it's about the same as the Nintendo switch online controller if I'm being honest that makes me wonder if the other stock controller was just too worn in and it was a little bit more difficult this is a little bit difficult I mean I don't really think people are going to be tiptoeing around like this a lot in this game but it definitely seems like there's a lot more range in this stock stick compared with the GameCube style stick and I don't have the same issue with Mario not being able to run basically being locked into that 45 degree angle this seems a lot more like the Nintendo switch online controller and a stock stick at least for this game not having any problems with the bridge [Music] yeah yeah and no problems with the Mario test okay here's the bottom line in my unprofessional opinion if you are a Super Smash Brothers player or an FPS player I don't think you're really ever going to be a stock wired N64 controller if you want the best possible performance then the stock N64 controller is probably the best for you if you're a casual N64 enjoyer I don't think it can go wrong with either the Nintendo switch online controller or the 8-Bit doe controller with a stock thumbstick in it with both the NSO controller and the 8bit doe PCB you are going to need a blue retro receiver it doesn't have to be the Retro time receiver that's just the ones that I use and I I really like them because they're very small form factor and they seem to work pretty well with all the tests that I did but obviously you could build your own blue retro adapter because it's open source I actually have a video about how how to do that up in the top over here but yeah for my purposes I don't really have a use for this GameCube hall effect controller I mean I think it's a really cool idea to use hall effect sensors inside of here so you don't have to worry about anything like stick drift but it doesn't feel like the stock controller out of the box maybe there's a way to mess around in the blue retro firmware or something to make this feel I guess in software because it's never going to feel like uh the normal gates in the stock controller the gate in this is not going to feel the same but yeah out of the box I didn't really find this that enjoyable cost wise the Nintendo switch online controller is 50 plus you have to buy Nintendo switch online obviously so that's a cost that you have to factor in when buying this controller versus the just the PCB alone for the 8-Bit doe kit is thirty dollars but with the GameCube thumbstick which you probably shouldn't really buy unless you really want one is forty dollars so price price wise the apito controller is still cheaper both of these you'll need a the receiver which is extra money but yeah the 8-Bit dough PCB kind of wins in the cost regard that's assuming that you have a good stock controller at your disposal if you don't then the Nintendo switch online controller is kind of where it's at I also wanted to mention that because aprito created this PCB I think we're going to enter into a A Whole New World of N64 controller customization having a replacement stock PCB that allows you to use everything that already exists in the third-party community and it being a wireless form factor this is like the barrier to entry for me having it having a controller wireless is first and second it needs to look stock so taking this fantastic jungle green controller and making it Wireless that's that's mind-blowing for a lot of people thanks for watching this quick video get subscribed if you like console modding videos and I'll see in the next video

Channel: Dubesinhower

Views: 78,575

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Id: cGLBmfL34Gg

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023