My general question ... where do you folks go when searching for replacement parts for aging technology, particularly pertaining to game consoles? I've come across iFixit, and of course there's Amazon and eBay as well, but I've been having some difficulty finding a particular part.

My specific issue is, I have an old Dualshock 4 (model CUH-ZDT2U, with PCB/motherboard model JDM-055) that is on the outs. It started experiencing some stick drift, so I took it apart to clean the contacts in the joystick housing to the best of my ability. In doing so, one of my kids managed to get a hold of the controllers' guts and break off the vibration motor wires from the board.

So, after taking the board and chassis to a local Makerspace, I got the wires soldered back onto the board. So far so good! However, the stick drift is still an issue and the vibration connection isn't that great. So now, I'm hoping to find some replacement parts - namely, a replacement board with the chassis and motors included.

One of the main reasons why I'm trying to refit this old controller, rather than replace it outright ... is because my wife bought the controller (and the PS4 it came with) as an anniversary present years ago. I'm the sentimental type and I'm trying to keep as much of this old controller going as I can, Ship-of-Theseus style. In addition, these controllers don't come cheap - $70 seems to be the basement these days for a new, in-box controller.

I've taken a swing at purchasing replacement parts off eBay - however, while the controller models matched, the board models did not. iFixit has the exact parts I need, but they are out of stock and their stock is inconsistent. I found another site - Fasttech.ca - that purports to have the same parts, but looking around online I've found a fair bit of discussion surrounding this site and the fact that it may be less-than-reputable.

Any advice on where else I might be able to look for parts?

Anniversary

The Dreamcast is now 25 years old in the US, after its memorable release date of 9/9/99!

Europe has another month to go (it released on 14 October 1999), and Japan already beat the world to the anniversary by almost a year (27 November 1998).

Share your thoughts, memories, favorite games, or anything else related to the Dreamcast here. You can reminisce about how cool Sonic Adventure was, how groundbreaking Shenmue was, or how unsettling Seaman was.

Play Along

I am taking a month out of my regular gaming habits (mostly smaller indie Steam stuff) to play different Dreamcast games through September in honor of the anniversary. If anyone wants to join me in that, I’d love the company!

Every so often I’ll post a comment to this topic with thoughts on what I’m playing. Feel free to post yours as well!

If anyone needs a place to get started, we have a topic with some game recommendations.

I’ll be emulating them on my Steam Deck through RetroDECK (which uses the Flycast core for RetroArch). I’ve already tested out a bunch of games, and performance and compatibility seem to be really good.

There are no points for this (it’s purely for fun), but if there were, anyone playing on original hardware would get bonus ones!

I was impressed with our community’s response to this same question for the PlayStation.

I’m thinking of focusing my gaming habits on the Dreamcast for the month of September by emulating some old classics and hidden gems. I’d love to hear this community’s recommendations for the greatest underdog console of all time.

Let me know what games for Dreamcast you think are still worth playing today, especially less well-known ones, and why!

Homebrew and fan translations are also eagerly welcome!

This is what everyone always says. It's the big punchline of this console generation.

They say it as if they meant "Sony hasn't made or published any games worth playing since November 2020." That's definitely not true. Sony's released several great, critically acclaimed games on PS5: Returnal, Horizon 2, God of War Ragnarok, and just recently they had Helldivers 2. They've had a PS5 game get nominated for Game of the Year every year.

What people have really complaining about is "Sony doesn't keep their games solely on the PS5, instead they've also been bringing them to PS4 and/or PC when able." Isn't that... good?

I remember during the PS3 and PS4 generations, it sucked that you'd have to buy a whole console for that 1 exclusive you were interested in. I had a friend who got a PS4 solely to play Bloodborne. I saw a lot of people back then interested in these exclusives coming to PC. For convenience, for better graphics and frame rates, for the novelty, for game preservation, for any number of reasons.

Now it's finally happened, Sony's big IPs are pretty much all on PC. You can go buy God of War or Ratchet and Clank on Steam. That's awesome! 15-years-ago me would've never believed that could happen in a million years.

And how did people react? "Why would I buy a PS5? It has no games!" It has games, they're just not keeping the games locked up there serving a life sentence, maybe getting a remaster 20 years later if they're lucky. I also find it odd how the Series X has even less exclusives, releasing games day-and-date on PC, but nobody jokes about that.

As of late, I've decided to introduce my dad to video games. It's his birthday upcoming in a few days, and I'm leaning towards getting an Xbox of some kind. I haven't been in the world of vidya for quite some time, so I'm hoping to lean on other opinions to make the right decision.

The main question I have is: if I'm buying used, is it worth it to try and find a Series S/X or would I be fine at entry level with an Xbox One? I figure I'll get GamePass and figure out what sorts of games he'd like to play before investing. I only really have $200 to spend, which puts a Series more or less out of the question. Would an Xbox One be a decent introduction to gaming for someone who doesn't have much of a standard for graphics / gameplay etc.? Also: what games should I add to the library?

Curious to hear what the people of tildes think.

As we close in on 3 years of use with these newer consoles, what are every one’s thoughts? Has “next gen” been what you thought it’d really be or are you kinda just feeling whelmed?

I have a PS5 and I use it every now and then for pretty much the first party games. PC is my main platform but as I think back, I’ve been pretty happy with my PS5 and the games to come so far. I also really enjoy the UI (although custom backgrounds would be great).

I don’t know how the Xbox side is so I’d love to hear your thoughts to!

Thanks for taking the time to read.