On the infamous "ESS Adapter", from the one who conceived it

Since I've historically been the main complainer regarding Virtual Console controls for the N64 Zelda games, and since the so-called "ESS Adapter" was originally my idea, I feel like I should finally clarify exactly what the issue is, since there are a ton of misconceptions regarding what it does and what its actual purpose is.

Simply put: The ESS adapter, as most people think of it (being a box that converts your control stick inputs while still using a GameCube controller), was never really meant to be a thing. The actual purpose of it, when me and Whyieyesya originally conceived of it, was to essentially make it not feel awful and clunky to use a Nintendo 64 controller on the Virtual Console versions of OoT and MM. The real reason why I always had trouble doing ESS on VC was not necessarily because of the deadzone on the control stick (although that is part of it). The main reason was always that the GC control stick itself is too sensitive, especially for someone like me who has really shaky hands and has a hard time holding my thumb perfectly still while nervous. This is made slightly worse on the GameCube and Virtual Console versions, thanks to the deadzone, but it's still somewhat of a problem even on N64 with a GC controller.

Where the deadzone on VC really becomes an issue is when you try to use an N64 controller with it. The deadzone was calculated (albeit rather poorly, at least on VC) to fit a GC control stick, because simply using a 1:1 input mapping would cause very serious problems due to the hardware design differences between the N64 and GC controllers. To elaborate: Unlike the N64 control stick, which works mechanically by rotating a wheel and measuring how far the wheel has turned from its set "default" position, the GC control stick uses a potentiometer and is quite sensitive - to the point where most GC controllers will not always center at exactly (0, 0) when the game is turned on. GameCube games are specifically designed with this in mind, but N64 games are not - hence, using a GC controller on N64 with a simple 1:1 mapping would cause insurmountable problems with the stick's sensitivity. The deadzones on VC games, as well as the GC versions of OoT and MM (and even the Raphnet adapter, to an extent) are meant to combat this, making it so that tiny amounts of pressure on the stick won't cause unwanted inputs.

Use this deadzone on an N64 controller, though, and everything feels very wrong. Getting even a small amount of stick input requires moving it significantly further than normal, and the whole stick range feels like a weird box-like shape instead of a circle. Recently, Raphnet released a new version of the N64 -> VC adapter that tries to make it feel less awkward (albeit using a Wiimote rather than the GC controller ports on the Wii), but this version of the adapter had not yet been made when work on what is now known as the "ESS Adapter" began. The purpose of the ESS Adapter, then, was to improve on the original Raphnet adapter in order to make it feel less clunky and awful to use an N64 controller on the GC and VC versions of OoT and MM, by simply removing the deadzone that was placed there to make the game suitable for a GameCube controller.

What we didn't know was that the transformation that was made on GC/VC was much more than a simple deadzone increase. As it turned out, every VC game had the control stick completely remapped from scratch, for whatever reason, and the resulting transformation was actually different for each game (so a single universal "de-mapping" was out of the question). The project shifted from "make an adapter that removes the deadzone so these games actually work properly on an N64 controller" to "completely remap the stick, coordinate-by-coordinate, to make it feel exactly like N64". And this is quite a big difference - so much so that it could conceivably be thought of as hardware modification. Removing a deadzone is one thing; completely remapping the control stick in fundamental ways is another thing entirely.

This was worrying enough that it actually caused me to back away from the project, and it was made even worse when demand rose for a version of the adapter that used a GameCube controller rather than an N64 controller. This version of the adapter - which could hardly be called an adapter, since you're using the same controller as the port you're plugging into anyway - became the most popular version by far, making the so-called "adapter" little more than a cheat box you plug your controller into in order to make ESS slightly easier. At that point, I pretty much lost interest in the project altogether, and was actually very surprised when I found out that it was being allowed on the leaderboards in its current form. Even though it was my idea, I didn't even order one until just a few weeks ago - several years after the adapter's initial release.

That said, several people have demonstrated that the VC deadzone doesn't actually hinder their ability to ESS and angle change much, if at all, which has eased a lot of my initial worries about the adapter's legitimacy. The usefulness of it, I think, has been quite exaggerated; in my experience, the type of controller (N64 or GameCube, and even which GameCube controller variant) you're using has a much bigger impact on your ability to ESS and angle change than the deadzone does. The real issue, again, is that the GC controller's joystick is physically much more sensitive than the N64 one; which, especially combined with the deadzone on the GC/VC versions of OoT and MM, can cause problems for people who have a hard time holding their hands steady for prolonged periods of time. The primary reason for removing the deadzone is that the deadzone makes playing with an N64 controller extremely awkward, and seems to cause some glitching when ESS angle changing sometimes (at least in Majora's Mask). With that in mind, I don't really think it's a big deal anymore; if it's not letting you do anything you couldn't already do, and has no objective advantage other than comfort of control, I see no reason to be all that concerned about it.

-ingx24