You can buy replacement sticks and gear assemblies for dirt cheap too if yours is in REALLY bad shape

Hi i'm Junebug, the bug from online. I'm very cool and everyone who has ever met me loves me.
You can buy replacement sticks and gear assemblies for dirt cheap too if yours is in REALLY bad shape
The heck is all the powder? Dust from the stick rubbing or something?
Yep, it’s an unfortunate but inherent flaw in the N64’s stick design. Plastic gears grinding against plastic spokes and a plastic bowl naturally grinds off dust over time
OUGH that's bad.
Have you done full stick replacements before? I heard that actual New Condition N64 sticks feel amazing but I don't think I've felt one like that in over 20 years now. It seemed like all of the replacement options had various caveats?
New sticks feel pretty good! Contain your expectations though, it's still based on plastic gears and spokes, so it's not going to be buttery smooth like modern sticks. What it DOES have above those sticks though, is accuracy. The N64's stick is unusually tall compared to most sticks, and offers a lot more degrees of movement because of that. This is why a lot of N64 ports to modern consoles become really difficult when more granular control is expected. Try playing any part of Banjo-Tooie where you're expected to tiptoe on the Xbox ports - it's nigh-impossible compared to playing the same thing on an N64 with a well-maintained stick. While most modern games take this into account with their deadzones and degrees of movement, nothing really beats the precise feel of a fresh N64 stick. ^_^
I've heard of extremely good condition ones being very smooth, I think possibly a NOS stick with new grease put in. I can't imagine a n64 stick ever being smooth, maybe no physical deadzone but not smooth.
I guess that explains why the hori mini stick is so dang big/tall, it does get you that extra physical sensitivity from stop to stop. Shame it doesn't put in the correct values. I've wondered how hard it would be to fix that.