I Fought the Joycon Drift, The Drift Won

Posted on September 8, 2023 by Aywren

I got my Nintendo Switch at launch, back in March of 2017. It’s taken all these years (though I feel it was gently used) for joycon drift to finally strike.

I take that back. I felt the first signs of joycon drift a few years back. It was subtle and inconsistent, so I tossed some joycons on my Amazon wishlist and carried on. As of this week, however, the drift has gotten so bad that it’s become impossible to use the left stick to properly select items on the screen.

If I try to move up or down on the stick, it continues to move even when I’m no longer pushing the stick – which is the definition of joycon drift. I ensured both the system and controller had the newest updates. I attempted recalibrating the control sticks – and that’s actually when I saw visible proof of the drift happening.

I know that years back, Nintendo was offering free repairs of joycons. However, seeing that this system is over 6 years old, I felt like chances are, any repairs I tried to get would likely cost me something. Not to mention, these were the joycons that went through the great power surge back when this system was still new.

As much as I despise the fact that the cost of joycons are still as expensive as they have ever been, I decided there was just no reason to remain frustrated with the way my system played due to this. So, I plunked down the cash to buy a new set of joycons.

A little bit of history on this: I always wish I could have gotten a set of the pastel Animal Crossing joycons back in the day. I don’t know if they even came to the US, though I did look for them from time to time.

I was also a bit sad that the only system I could snag at release had the black joycons rather than the red and blue. So. When I chose new joycons, I picked the pastel purple and green set – it being the closest I could get to the blue and green of the Animal Crossing set.

I’m looking forward to using the new joycons, and hope that maybe it’ll be inspiration to play my Switch games more – because this is something I want to do!

Doesn't it look lovely?

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