N64 z button no longer works in controller 1 port

[fudgecakes99]

Yeah i'm not entirely sure whether i have some sort of dust buildup in the connectors or the nintend 64 controller port itself is broken. Am i better off just buying a replacement port and soldering in a new one? Has this happened to anyone before any advice is much appreciated.

[NFG]

There's only three pins in an N64 connector, if any one of them was not working the entire controller would fail.  You do not have a problem with your ports, I'm pretty sure.

Beyond that...  I'd be making some -wild- guesses.

[kendrick]

On a first-party N64 controller, the Z button is the second thing to fail after the analog stick. Common points of failure are the rubber membrane, the electrical contact and the actual plastic of the trigger mechanism, in roughly that order. That the Z button has its own little PCB board separate from the rest of the face buttons means that it's also possible for one of the internal wires to be crimped or disconnected entirely.

I note with interest that this is a sort of yearly problem for you, and that you probably know all these things about the inside of your controller already.

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5966.0