Worn out D-pad plastic on Gameboy Color, poor responsiveness (maybe other Nintendo systems, too?)

So after picking up a second Gameboy Color I noticed that the D-pad was much more responsive on the newly acquired one than my childhood Gameboy. No matter how much I cleaned my original Gameboy, I couldn't do anything about the D-pad feeling mushy and less responsive. Getting Link to walk in all 8 directions in the Zelda games was consistently a pain. I even tried putting some NOS rubber pads in the unit and it didn't make any difference.

Finally I look both the newly acquired GBC and my original apart and decided to examine the plastic D-pad itself. Sure enough, there was a significant difference: the plastic ball pivot on the back of my original GBC pad had a flat spot on the top from being worn down, while "new" unit had a perfectly round ball pivot. My brother was the joint owner of my original GBC and he was an avid Pokemon player for several years, and between the two of us that thing has seen quite a bit of abuse.



I had one of those crappy Chinese knockoff D-pads lying around and it made things a fair bit worse, since it would press all 4 directional buttons at once rather than allowing it to pivot (I don't recommend ever buying Chinese knockoff parts). I don't know of any way to repair the worn out one, so the only solution seems to be to replace the D-pad with a genuine Nintendo one. Maybe someone with a little more knowledge of things like plastics, adhesives and resins even has some ideas for how to restore the ball pivot's shape, but I just opted to order a genuine pad from eBay as a replacement.

This makes me wonder about other Nintendo controllers that I've tried to clean or repair in the past but the D-pad remained unresponsive. I have an old Super NES controller that has a somewhat stubborn D-pad even after a thorough cleaning, and I suspect the same cause is responsible.

Given that these systems are for the most part going to be getting played pretty lightly compared to when we were all kids and were glued to them, I don't think wear and tear on that level is going to be much of a problem going forward. Even so, I thought it was worth sharing this observation since everyone else always recommends simply cleaning the contacts without taking the plastic piece into consideration.

 

I replaced the rubber contacts on my GBC's Dpad using those of a GB pocket (some douche sold me a GB pocket which failed after 2 days, but for 5€ and a game, I was expecting it to be bad anyways), was not sure if it was going to work, but it does. The B and A buttons contacts are different however (they might work if you fiddle with them). My GBC Dpad feels like new actually, the GB pocket might have been in storage for a long time, the contacts were in very good shape.

 

could be the plastic button but also could be the conductive pad and rubber membrane

 

I replaced both the plastic D-pad and the rubber membrane with ones from another gameboy that were in better condition. It doesn't feel brand new like the other Gameboy I picked up, but that's likely because of wear on the contacts. Replacing both definitely made a bigger difference than just replacing the membrane, which I had already tried previously.

 

Funny, I was about to post something here to ask whether anyone has experience with cleaning/repairing/replacing the D-Pad on a GBA (purchased when the system got released), since the right/down direction buttons have become rather unresponsive over the years.

However I just noticed it after trying it out again after all these years (switched to my NDS when that got released), for some reason I don't remember having this issue when I stopped playing on it (which would mean it happend on its own by just lying around?)

 

It's possible that the rubber has deteriorated, which could be due to humidity levels or temperature.

For the GBA, there are fortunately good replacement rubber contacts available. I bought some of these and my GBA works good as new, and thankfully unlike the crappy ones I've tried for SNES controllers these do not allow for all 4 directions to be pressed simultaneously (that problem makes rolling the D-pad difficult and causes glitches in certain games).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171774262766?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Cleaning the rubber contacts with Windex or rubbing alcohol and cleaning the plastic is pretty much always my first choice for trying to make an old controller work better. If that doesn't work I'd try replacing the rubber contacts, but in the worst case scenario the D-pad itself might be in need of replacement. In general I hesitate to replace rubber contacts just because depending on the manufacturer, the replacements might not be up to snuff. I'm also hesitant to use third party D-pads because they're usually shaped slightly different from the official ones, although some aren't bad.