The Vergecast - A speedrunner’s quest to (re)build the perfect N64 controller

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

We’re kicking off our “Five Senses of Gaming” miniseries today, starting with “touch.” The Verge’s William Poor explores a controller crisis in the Nintendo 64 speedrunning community, and follows one speedrunner’s quest to recreate a mythical controller he lost. Further reading/viewing: How Sticks Are Sabotaging Speedrunners (Stick Crisis History) abney317 on Twitch The Quest to Beat abney317 Mariokart64.com More on Beck Abney’s controller problems Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like,

Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Mushy Bowls. I'm your friend David Pierce, and this is the first in a new series of episodes

sponsored by Visible Wireless, all about gaming. For the next four Sundays, we are going to tell you about all kinds of different stories in gaming. We did a series last fall, we had a ton of fun, we're doing it again. But this time we're doing it slightly differently. We're going to tell you stories about the five senses of the gaming world. And if you're saying, David, there are five senses and you just said four Sundays.

That's true. You're going to have to stick around to see how we figure it out. Our friends from Polygon are going to join us to help explain. We have some really fun, wild stories about how the five senses show up all over the video game world. The first one we're doing is all about touch. And our touch story comes from a very specific corner of the gaming world, speed running. These are those incredibly dead. dedicated gamers who just try to beat games in as little time as possible.

They play it over and over, faster and faster, always trying to get time down, either by exploiting glitches and shortcuts in the game or just spending hours and hours and hours finding the exact optimal path through a game. If you've never watched a speed run, pick your favorite game and just poke around on YouTube. You'll probably find someone playing it in ways that you seriously didn't think were possible. And people who are really good at speed running can often do it blindfolded, which is just a whole other thing that I don't even understand. Our producer Willpour poked around the Nintendo 64 speedrunning community, and he discovered

that all is not well there, and is very not well, for one speedrunner in particular. I'll let we'll take it from here. I am a big fan of Nintendo 64, and so I was delighted to discover just how popular my favorite games are for speedrunners. I've been watching these incredible videos of people flying through Mario 64, Zelda, Mario Kart. finding all these shortcuts and hacks that I had no idea about when I was playing these games back in the day. But the more I learned about the N64 community, the more I heard about this problem that they've been dealing with for years. I found this really dramatic YouTube video that lays it all out.

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 speed running on the N64. The issue is, when you play lots of these games competitively, you end up beating the crap out of your controller. You're playing for hours every day and you're going really hard, so you're wearing down a bunch of little plastic parts that were just never built for it. In an N64 controller, it's the joysticks that eventually give out. I actually remember this happening. My brothers and I used to fight over which controller we got to use, because the joystick

on one of them just kind of flopped around. So it's a super common thing, but if you're a speed runner, a bad controller can cost you a lot of time and precision, so everyone wants nice, pristine hardware to play with. The problem is, Nintendo hasn't made original N64 controllers for 20 years, and all that time, speed runners have been burning through joysticks at a fast enough clip. that the world is running out of them. So under this major threat of having to go outside, speedrunners have been waging a desperate war trying to halt this problem before time runs out.

N64 controllers are now real commodities. On eBay, an unopened, genuine Nintendo controller can go for more than $500. There are third-party controllers out there, but they're just not as good. So lots of speedrunners end up playing what they're, call the eBay lottery, they buy a used Nintendo-made controller and just hope the joystick is okay. And this looks in pretty good shape. Stick is actually pretty tight. Stick on this one is also,

it's a little loose, but it's not too bad. There's even a cottage industry of people building new joystick parts. Some are 3D printed, really nice ones are made of steel, but those go in and out of stock. There's a secondary market. It's a whole thing. Anyway, the story that I'm here to tell, it's set in the world of that controller shortage, but it's not that story. It's about this one very accomplished Mario Kart 64 speedrunner, who has a very different, much lonelier problem. Just to start off, how'd you get into speed running and when? I started playing Mario Kart 64 in, I guess, like late 2013. I had owned the game when it originally came out,

but I probably never touched it again after the GameCube came out. But I just randomly had the N-64 around one day and was just messing around with Mario Kart on it. This is the humble beginning of Beck Abney, or Abney 317 online. Today, he's a 30-year-old software engineer and Mario Card legend. But back in 2013, he was just a guy dusting off an old game system for fun.

Then I think I was looking up how to do mini turbos or something online and accidentally found the time trial rankings and thought, oh, here, this looks fun, I'll just submit some times. The site he found was MarioCart64.com, home of that game's speedrunning community. Basically, a group of gamers dedicated to completing each of the game's 16 courses in as little time as possible. Mario Kart 64 was released back in 1996, so by the time Beck wandered in, they'd been at it for more than 15 years. The website has times from people who submitted, you know, right when the game came out. So the community has existed for a really long time, and when I joined, and long after I joined, it was just kind of you send an email in with whatever your times are.

You know, you may or may not provide proof. before I joined, people were mailing in VHS tapes and things like that. And Beck thought, I can get into this. I'll drive some times today and see where it ends up. I think I was maybe 350th or 360, somewhere in the mid-300s when I first joined, which today would be maybe equivalent to 500-something because we've had so many more people joined in the last 10 years. Now, 10 years later, I'm still blank.

He didn't stay in the mid-300s for long, though. He started playing for hours a day, or grinding, as speedrunners would call it, and it was showing. So what put you on the map in speed running? What were your first records? When I first was playing, I went up the ranks really quickly, so I was really high-ranked in non-shortcut and short-cut. A lot of people don't really play both a ton. usually one's more focused on the other, but I was kind of doing everything. So some context here.

It's pretty easy to cheat in Mario Kart. On some tracks, you can hop over guardrails and land way further ahead in the course. In other spots, you can glitch the game out by crashing into just the right out-of-bounds wall, and you get warped to the finish line. Over the years, discovering new shortcuts has become a sport unto itself. So today, the community divides records up into these two. buckets, runs that use shortcuts, and runs the don't. Anyway, Beck was making waves in both categories, but he really made a name for himself in shortcuts.

My first record eventually was the new Chaco Mountain shortcut was discovered in 2014. It's a pretty absurd hack. You launch yourself straight at a wall right at the start of the race and then fall backwards across the finish line. But somehow, the game thinks you've driven a full lap. I was the first person to hit it about six months after it was discovered to get like a five second lap. It was just kind of automatic world record just for hitting it. It was like a 10 second world record improvement. And then I would improve the three lap record a few months later as well. And that record kept going down.

Again, being competitive in any game means grinding. Playing for hours and hours and hours, shaving off a second here, a second there. I've watched Beck Play. he livestreams on Twitch, and it is oddly mesmerizing. Hello, I'm going to pose some roars for you again. Lots of speedrunners go pretty big in their streams, especially when they hit records. Bowser, please. Yes!

In defendant four! By comparison, Beck is pretty understated. Here he is hitting that Chaco Mountain shortcut on all three laps, which meant finishing the whole race in less than 18 seconds. The non-shortcut record, for reference, is a minute 55. Oh my God! He just smiles, shakes his head, and chuckles to himself. It is a pretty good run.

Shortcuts are really weird to watch, because the glitches are often very hard to trigger. So it's a lot of trying, failing, resetting, and trying again, and again. But there's something about Beck that is clearly tuned to that kind of Zen state, and it's worked for him. So long sessions, lots of attempts, what as you're rising through the ranks here, what is your end goal? What do you have your sights on? I just kept trying to improve. There's a lot of good goals in this game that they have that kind of keep people playing a lot. I think I got up to number two in non-shortcut, and eventually I was grinding to become shortcut champ, and I became number one in the shortcut category. His specialty was playing through all 16 courses using all the known shortcuts. He was so dominant that a YouTuber named Summiting Salt made an hour-long video just about the quest to beat him.

And then there's Abney, making a joke of the competition. Nobody could catch up to him without new strategies. But the competition was heating up. Twenty years after the release of Mario Kart 64, the game was more popular than ever to speed run. Beck fell back to third place in non-shortcut driving, but he fought to stay competitive, and he kept improving. I was better at driving in 2019 than I was in 2016, even though I dropped back to third place, because I was playing shortcut and I was doing the full game runs and streaming a lot and playing a lot of different categories. I definitely improved until 2019, and then I had a lot of controller issues. In 2019, everything changed for Beck.

And not for the better. That's the year the N64 controller crisis caught up with him. The joystick failures, the parts shortage, all of it. But in a way that no one could have anticipated. That's after the break. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster.

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Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash verge for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash verge for 30% off. Framer.com slash verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back. To recap, the year is 2019. Beck Abney is a Mario Kart speed running phenomenon. But the more he plays, the more he noticed. The more he noticed, is that something is off. How did you find yourself in your own very lonely predicament around controllers? You know, that day when I just randomly decided to start playing it, we had three controllers

and I just picked them all. And my old gray controller happened to be in the best condition. I was like, oh, this one's good. I'll just use this one. And I just kept using that same controller for the next couple of years. And as it slowly wore down, I never. really noticed it. I just kind of got used to it. And I kept improving my times, so I didn't think much of it. I kept improving, and the controller just kept getting more and more destroyed from me

playing Mario Kart. And then eventually, that controller got worn down so much that I couldn't turn properly with it anymore. If speed running in general is stressful for controllers, Mario Kart is torture. You're constantly wrenching the joystick back and forth to get these little speed boosts. And if you're really grinding, a new controller can flake out in a matter of weeks. Yeah, so what are the parts that are degrading and failing? Yeah, there's like a little bowl on the inside that kind of pushes up against the bottom of the analog stick, and it sort of is just like a little curved plastic bowl, and the

analog stick just will dig into this plastic. It's just plastic on plastic. and if you open up one of these controllers that's old and used, it will just be full of plastic dust from the bowl being just shaved down. There are ways to extend the life of these parts. Some speedrunners open up their controllers and lubricate all the places where plastic grinds on plastic. But eventually, those little sticks and bowls will be toast. This is the crux of the joystick shortage.

And it was the backdrop as Beck went looking for a new controller. I was like, okay, I need a different controller now, I guess. And then when I tried to use a perfect condition one, I bought a bunch on eBay that were a little bit easier to find back then. I was like, oh, I can't drive very well with this one. The problem, bizarrely, was that the new controller was too nice. He'd gotten really good at playing with a half-broken controller. What is the best language that you have to describe what it is your feeling for with the perfect controller? In the past, I've described it as, and if people have used a lot of N64 controllers or bad ones,

will kind of know what I mean is like, it's mushy. Like the analog stick as you're pushing it, like a perfect one, will feel like the same when you're pushing it, you know, halfway versus all the way like it feels like one fluid motion where like the, I guess, once that I'm using will be kind of harder to push as you get closer to the edge. It like stops me before I even get there really, but it's like kind of a weird squishy feeling for it. Beck opened up his old controller and he saw that, yep, the little plastic bowl was worn down. He realized that that was the source of the mushyness. So as a test, he put that old part into a new controller.

And it worked. He had a new controller that felt like an old mushy one. So for a while, Abney 317 was back. But then that controller failed. And that same process happened maybe two or three more times where I kind of was like, oh, well, I know the solution now. I'll just, I just have to swap out everything except the bowl, keep the super worn down bowl and swap out all the other parts. And I was doing that. And I was getting world records at that point, too. The intensity was ramping up. He was driving faster, grinding harder, and destroying his controllers along the way.

I remember specifically getting a Rainbow Road non-shorkout world record. My controller broke and literally the analog stick actually snapped in half off the controller. Beck and his squishy bowl were riding high, but it was never going to last forever. And then eventually it was worn down too much. He put the old bowl in yet another new controller, but it was too far gone. There's no going back at that point. The perfect controller was well and truly dead, and it was the worst possible time for this kind of setback.

Beck felt like he was this close to being at the top of his game, which would be the top of pretty much anyone's game. But now he was being held back. It got to the point where I was reaching closer and closer to my top potential of driving maybe, and I was more and more picky over time. And every time I'd have to swap controllers, I'd be like, oh, well, this one's not quite as good as the one I was just using.

So it feels like you are like with your own sort of aptitude for the game hitting a ceiling where whatever tiny difference the controller makes is for you the difference between improving or not improving. It's like I might be able to improve in the game more, but I'm not able to even get to where I was. But Beck wasn't finished. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was grind. After the break, the quest to rebuild the perfect controller.

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His ideal controller no longer existed, and competitors were eating away at his hard-won records. At this point, his options were, one, throw in the towel, two, spend years retraining himself on a good controller, or three, somehow reverse engineer his old messed up joystick. For Beck, there was only one way forward. So talk to me about what hoops you have jumped through

to try to recreate this mythical controller. I mean, originally it was like, let me just buy 100 controllers on eBay and just go crazy and see if I get lucky. So I literally just have an absurd amount of controllers. And it's possible I could mix and match something and it actually would work. I never really had any luck with that.

So next, Beck tried designing custom parts that mimicked his old controller. He used a 3D printing service to build them. Shoutouts to Yasmin in my Discord, who had modeled some of these for me, took some existing 3D models that other people had made, and basically artificially like shaved down the bowl to make it kind of worn down as if someone had actually used it a bunch. but I'm just 3D printing it, you know, out of the box, just in bad condition on purpose. For the record, modifying controllers is allowed in Mario Kart Speed Running.

You just can't add new functionality to it. We did like a ton of different ones. So like 0.1 millimeters cut out, 0.2, and then like all the way to like 1.5 millimeters carved out. And I 3D print them all and I tested them all. And one or two of them I was like, oh, this is kind of close. It felt familiar. Yeah. With that encouragement, he started iterating on other parts, like the joystick and the springs.

Now let's print it in a bunch of different materials. Maybe the different materials will feel different. And they do. Very different, actually. Beck showed me this spreadsheet he's been using to keep track of all the permutations. To date, he's tested 33 distinct combinations of bowl and stick and springs. He's got comments on all of them. Most or some variation on, meh.

But a couple feel promising. He even set a world record with one of them. It's basically just guess and check, just kind of spend a bunch of my three printing random iterations and hope something magically works for me. Is this as frustrating as it sounds, as you're telling me this? It sounds incredibly frustrating. Yeah, it's pretty annoying. I mean, I'm lucky that I have a fairly popular stream and other stuff I can play, and it's still fun. but unfortunate, I guess, because it's like I probably could have competed more.

I think there were records that I was close to getting that I didn't have. I was at one point really close on like the Luigi Raceway three-lap non-shortcut record. And then I had controller problems and they kind of ran away far ahead of me after that. And it's like, I have no idea if I would be able to drive the time. Like their times are way beyond what I was doing five years ago. So I have no idea if I could get there now. Do you feel the irony of everyone else hunting for pristine joysticks while you are hunting for these half-broken ones? Kind of, yeah.

Yeah, it's funny. And I have some of those, like, steel stick controllers and stuff that people want. I use them for some shortcut stuff. But, yeah, it's, like, hard for me to create my perfect garbage controller that I want. And I don't have that controller. I can't, like, 3D scan the parts and just replicate them or something. The really galling part is that some other players prefer crappy controllers too. One of his biggest rivals does.

But Beck says that somehow it's easier for them to get used to new parts. He'll be like, oh, I can't use this one anymore. And he'll do like a whole controller testing stream, just testing other stuff. And I'll be like, oh, this one's fine now. Whereas try as he might, Beck just can't seem to warm up to anything else. It's such a bummer that as we talked, I started trying to work the problem myself. Like, what if you...

Okay, have you tried getting controllers from other Mario Kart 64 players? That was the genius idea, was to take the person who likes the perfect controller. Now, they're done with it. Pass it on to the person who likes the slightly worse controller and have, like, the big chain of people passing down controllers. Oh, my God. That was a thought. I have had people send me controllers. before. And someone sent me one, who was like pretty high ranked and plays a lot. They sent me one.

It was like, it was kind of mushy like I had described, but it like wasn't quite right. And it's also, I admitted we probably play the game like way more. So I would be waiting on controllers if they, you know, I'm like, hurry up and wear down your controller. So I can, I could play a good kind of thing. So for now, that's where things stand. Beck has another batch of three-ditch. printed parts arriving in the mail soon. He'll try those out and see if he gets lucky. In the meantime, he's working on a few shortcut records on individual courses. One of his Franken controllers works okay for that kind of race.

So you're still committed. Yeah. For now, at least. You're still here to defend your honor. Yeah, haven't completely given up because of the controllers yet. Gotcha. Do you have your dark moments where you're like, this is not worth it? Yeah, yeah.

If I didn't have like my stream and a lot of people watching and stuff, I probably just like wouldn't even play. I just, I would maybe do shortcut time trials to just keep my number one rank there. But it's just like honestly a lot more trouble than it's worth a lot of the time. Like spending all the money trying to print random stuff for none of it to work is just a lot. But to the being able to have something fun to stream or whatever at least keeps me motivated to. some degree on at least. Accepting your current situation and what you've got to work with,

what do you have your sights on now? The last few days I've been playing Yoshi Valley shortcut, three lap in time trials. Yoshi Valley is another one of those runs with a really weird glitch. You start the race and immediately veer off the course,

leap over a fence, and go flying into a canyon. Perfecting that shortcut means grinding out a super precise set of button presses for hours on end. Joystick to the left, break plus gas to turn, accelerate, leap, and sail into oblivion. Just launching off the side of the track and slamming into a wall over and over. Which happens to be a pretty good metaphor for Beck's situation right now.

He's doggedly testing new parts and new combinations, attempt after attempt to rebuild the perfect controller. But more often than not, he's not. hits a wall, the same wall, over and over and over again. All right. Thank you, Will. That is it for the Vergecast today. I am going to go hug my N64 controller, tighter than ever.

Thank you, as always, for listening. This is episode one, as I said, of our gaming series. Every Sunday this month, we are going to have different stories from the worlds of gaming all about the five senses. There's also lots more on the gaming world to read at theverge.com. It's a cool website. We like it a lot. And actually, there's a lot happening in the gaming world right now.

So go check it out. We'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, the verge.com. It's a website. It's right there. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam, Liam James, and Will Por. The Vergecast is Verge production

and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Tuesday to talk about AI voice notes, the Delta game emulator, and we'll take a question from the Vergecast hotline. See you then. Rock and roll.