What were they smoking in Kyoto in the early 90s

For cultural reference, Sony and Sega tried to do 3D with a D-Pad. Nintendo would show everybody why analog sticks mattered.

Map it like the GC controller did: Middle stick is left stick, yellow buttons are right stick, A B is whatever you like, triggers are triggers, and Z is another shoulder button

Actually that dumb thing rocks and when emulating an N64 game you should always play with some cheap knockoff of it you got from aliexpress.

What were they smoking in Kyoto in the early 90s

The hardware engineers on the N64 were the dankest of the decade. Only rivaled by PS2 and PS3 engineers

They designed it assuming that you would either use the D-pad or the joystick. Nintendo didn't imagine a world where every controller had two sticks and a d pad and players used all of them at the same time.

Anyway, assuming you're on a modern controller, D pad goes to D pad, joystick to left joystick and C buttons to right joystick. A/B are A/B or possibly B/A if you like, triggers are triggers and Z is left bumper.

Some rules of thumb:

Analogue stick -> left analogue stick

Z & R --> triggers

D pad -> D pad

L -> select button

And then, map A and B and the bottom right two C buttons to A B X Y, and then the top right C buttons to the shoulder buttons.

But you're going to want to change that based on what game you're playing. For example the Zelda games might make more sense with the C buttons using A B X Y, and then the A and B buttons getting remapped to triggers. For Mario 64, I map the C keys to the right analogue stick. On a lot of games I will use the right analogue stick for the analogue stick, as I'm more used to aiming with that (starfox, rogue squadron, turok come to mind).

Here's how I'd map to like, a standard xbox controller:

• center stick -> left stick
• Z -> right trigger (maybe left trigger if you want it to be under the stick)
• R-trigger -> right shoulder
• C-buttons -> D-pad
• A -> A
• B -> B
• Start -> Start
• D-Pad -> unmapped
• L-trigger -> unmapped

Vanishingly few games use the L-trigger or the D-pad and the C-stick is pretty uncommon as well.

Hah

The d-pad is almost never used, so don't worry about it. The L-button also normally doesn't get used. The yellow C buttons are often there to control a camera if you're playing a 3D platformer, so assign it to a right analog stick.

It’s actually an antipiracy method.

As a general rule, I map it the same way the GameCube does. However, it’s probably the emulator that I have proportionally more per-game setup. If I’m playing Zelda I have one setup, for ssb it’s another, for m64 it’s another, etc etc. most are just minor variances of the GameCube setup

Just hook a 64 controller up with a dongle.

You don’t need a gui.

I have different presets for different games. Playing stsrfox for example a I map a couple of the c buttons to L and R 1 because you use them along with the stick to do somersault and u turns and it's nice to still shoot easily while doing so. Zelda I make C left and right face buttons and c up as R 1 button cause those are your item buttons. F Zero X I have Z set to L 2 and R 1 and the opposite for L so I can press both shoulder buttons at once to drift.

So the weirdest thing is how it’s closest contemporary controller that will help you in understanding it is the Sega Genesis six button controller: a, b, and the c buttons are just the sega’s 6 primary buttons, you can even see it if you look at it sideways. Then there’s the SNES’s shoulder buttons, Z and R. L is select, and the D-pad is… there.