GAMING

The board itself is usually solid, but contacts may need replacing.

REFRESHING AN OLD
GAME CONTROLLER
If your retro-gaming skills ain’t what they used
to be, fix your joystick buttons. By Ben Wheeler

If you play vintage game systems, you’ll some- on eBay for about $5, and may come in any times find that Mario won’t jump on command, condition. Controllers for older systems can run or Ms. Pac-Man pauses when moving left. No $5-$20. Refurbished, guaranteed controllers can wonder: the Nintendo Entertainment System be quite a bit more: seller-certified Atari 5200 (NES) controller just celebrated its 20th birth- controllers, the most expensive, go for $30. day, and Atari, Intellivision, and Commodore 64 Vintage controllers fall into two categories: controllers are even older. Over the course of the analog joysticks (Atari, ColecoVision) and digital hundreds of sessions in a controller’s life, metal- direction pads (NES, Super Nintendo, Intellivi-lic connectors beneath the buttons and direction sion, Sega Master System and Genesis, PlaySta-pad can wear away and no longer complete the tion original). Joysticks have more complicated, if circuit that registers a keypress event. Luckily, elegant, internal mechanisms. Direction pads are it’s a simple matter to refurbish old controllers easier to fix because they are just a set of buttons and make them responsive again. overlaid with a piece of plastic. (Modern analog

Unrefurbished NES controllers are available controllers used with PlayStation 2, GameCube,