On Monday, March 28th, 2005, G4’s Attack of the Show unveiled the World’s Largest Working Nintendo Controller. Well, we’re not exactly sure about that title yet, but Guinness has the paperwork and we didn’t see anything listed in there yet–so our chances are pretty good.

Whether it was the nostalgia, the surprise, or the sheer delight of seeing two grown men play Super Mario Brothers (and die twice), the World’s Largest NES Controller had something for everyone. When we said it would only cost about $400 to build, people on our message boards cried out in unison “How? HOW?!?” I recently had some time to sit down with one of our crack team of Staff Scientists and our head electrician for the project, David Randolph. Hopefully, our semi-step-by-step instructions here will give you a better idea of some of the tech behind the monster:

1. Your first job will be mapping out the circuit on the NES controller. Remove the back of the controller and take a look at the circuit board. It should look pretty familiar. The carbon switches for each button lead back to a specific pin on the back of the Nintendo chip. You could try following them all with your eye, or you could simply “Tone Out,” which will be much faster. Be sure to keep track of what pins are connected to what buttons. Or check out this diagram.

You should also note that every carbon switch is also connected by a common ground.

2. Normally, the signal from the controller will go through the Nintendo chip and out through a serial connector directly to the NES. What we’re doing is basically adding another input that will go through these same channels. Our input to the controller was a nine-pin GPI. We picked this because, aesthetically, it looked best. And it allowed us to put the cover back on the NES controller when we were done. But anything with at least nine pins will work fine.

3. We used standard CAT-5 cable, because it’s already got eight pins and the core is solid copper, which is relatively easy to solder. We soldered the GPI first, making sure to use shrink tubing over each pin. This prevents the solder from dripping and causing a short. The GPI’s pins are numbered, which makes keeping track of them easy.

4. Soldering the connectors on the Nintendo chip is up next. We used about 4 inches of wire between the GPI and the chip. This will probably be the most difficult step inside the small controller. We recommend you solder from the inside out, use clamps, and lay off the coffee to keep everything steady. It is very important that no pin is soldered to any neighboring pins.

5. Once you’re done soldering, do another “tone out” test on each pin. If you hear tones, you’ve got a short. If you hear nothing, you’re good to go. If you want a clean looking controller like we had, you’ll have to dremmel out a place for the GPI connector to go. If you’re using the nine-pin GPI that we did, there’s plenty of room next to the NES controller cord.

6. Now we have to build the external inputs. We used Cherry brand Snap Action Switches from www.grainger.com and springs from www.mcmaster.com. The Cherry switches can be used as either “normally closed” (the trigger fires when the switch is not pressed down) or “normally open” (the trigger fires when the switch is pressed down). The A, B, Start and Select buttons all worked on the “normally closed” mode, while the D Pad was “normally open.”

7. Again, standard CAT-5 cable was used out from the GPI to connect to the proper switches. You can pretty much use the circuit board on the actual controller as a map to run the wires inside whatever case you use. We have some video of the “guts” of our controller in action; just look over to your left and click on the video image.

8. If you decide to try to make a ginormous controller, make sure the switches are mounted perfectly level with the top of whatever will be hitting the switch. If it’s not, you can end up breaking the switches or risk having the switches not fire at all. We used two springs each for the A, B, Start and Select buttons and one spring for each corner of the D-Pad. Positioning the springs is kind of a trial-and-error process.

9. We mounted the small NES controller inside the big one and ran the regular NES controller cable out to the actual NES unit.

And that’s it! You can download a PDF of the full schematic here.

Thanks to the talented crew who helped make this possible:

David Ledger
David Randolph
Stephen Lynd
Oliver Hildebrandt
Micah Slay

Watch the video of the original giant NES controller segment:

AOTS - Gigantic NES Controller


Watch Now

The Kevins of Attack Of The Show demonstrate their custom-built Nintendo Entertainment System controller, self-described as The World's Largest.