I had an accident. You could say that maybe I dropped it or that my puppy got the best of it, but let’s be honest.  It was all my fault. I am the reason for why my 360 controller is busted.  If you really want to know, I had a fit of rage, threw my controller and that is why I am now -1 controller.

And since I’m the type of person who likes to take things apart, I decided to play doctor and try to fix it. I had no idea what I was doing, but either way, there was nothing to lose. For anyone who’s always wondered what the insides of your controller look like, this blog’s for you.

The first step was to unscrew the back – 6 screws plus the hidden 7th one behind the barcode under the battery pack. That was the easy part. The controller came apart in two pieces – the bottom with all the fancy hardware and joysticks and the top with all the buttons and rubber pads. If you’re wondering what those mini-tire looking things are on the bottom corners, they feel a bit magnetic, but I think they’re also there to give the controller some weight and balance. Neat-o.

My problem was with the right joystick being stuck in a permanent “down” position. I easily slid off the joystick piece from whatever was holding it up, but discovered that this piece was also broken. Attached to the broken “stick” piece, was a spring – this is basically the piece that’s used when you click down on your joystick. Under all that was a frame that contained the movement of the joystick. I removed the copper piece and saw that the base of the joystick was also pretty broken. There weren’t even any spare broken pieces around even if I wanted to glue it back together!

So alas, there was nothing I could really do. I had fiddled around with the parts for a good couple hours, looked on the web for any possible solutions, but couldn’t find anything. I thought of crazy gluing some of the parts back in, but there’s no way you could decently play a game with a crapped up joystick. So now what? What to do with a janky controller? The only idea I can offer is to put this thing back together so that the joystick appears functional. Then the next time you’re playing Halo 2 and your friend is blaming the crappy controller, just give him a “you’re smoking crack!” look. At least it will be of some good use.