This thing is beautiful. The only problem is, not only is it only available through Club Nintendo, it's a Japanese exclusive. It's been out long enough to have found its way onto Ebay and other resellers, but it typically goes for about $100. Not cool, Nintendo. Not cool. There are 3rd party versions of this controller, but like the cheap Ebay knockoff SNES controllers, they're crap. So what's a guy to do? Let's build one!
So, obviously we have to start with an official SNES controller (or, just because I want to, a Super Famicom controller). I found this project implementing a classic controller adapter in a cheap AVR microcontroller and figured I could improve the hardware design. The existing design was incredibly simple, and the AVR came in a surface-mount package, so I figured I could shrink the board sufficiently to fit it inside the controller itself. Actually, there's a ton of room inside the controller, so I could have even fit the DIP version inside if I'd wanted to. But I wanted to do better. So I did. The PCB did shrink down nicely, and here's the result:
 |
| With a minimum of external parts, the final PCB shrunk down quite nicely |
 |
| The board fits perfectly over the pin header from the original cable |
 |
| The placement of the PCB avoids all of the spacer posts, meaning no cutting or other modification to the controller shell is necessary |
 |
| Voila! |
You can find more info, including source and PCB design files, at the project page on my site.
