Any tips on how to map a standard modern controller to this ...thing

Two d-pads, one analog stick, three triggers and two face buttons? What were they smoking in Kyoto in the early 90s

I have only seen a Nintendo 64 in real life like twice back in the 90s so I have no clue what all these buttons do in most games.

Thanks to recent developments I went and downloaded every Nintendo emulator I could. I was surprised to see how fractured Nintendo 64 emulation seems to still be on PC. I was expecting there to be a Duckstation, PCSX2 or Dolphin equivalent but no, there seems to be no clear winner, and two of the bigger ones are closed source and use plugins like it's 2005, and one doesn't even come with a GUI by default

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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.
- Yeah, they were trying to make something that could play with the d-pad or an analog stick before the dualshock. It's not an awful design, but there aren't too many popular games that use the d-pad so it seems goofy in retrospect.
  
  I can only think of that Tetris game that uses the dpad. It felt so weird to hold the controller by both arms instead of the right arm and the uh dongle

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
- I think I made a post calling the GC controller goofy when I was setting up Dolphin. In retrospect, I apologise- it's essentially just a DualShock with design language by Fisher-Price
  
  And yet one of the most ergonomic controllers ever designed IMO.
  
  No objection here lmao

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
- PS3 engineers
  forever cursing the fact that we live in the timeline that didn't get the boomerang controller

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.
- Even during the n64 games required all of these. That said it's not too hard to map goldeneye to a switch using the double controller style.

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.
- This is pretty good. If you were to add the emulator to steam as a non steam game and then launch the game from steam, you can have a few additional options too.
  Like making the unused bumpers (or any unused buttons that might be available on the controller) a modifier key when it's held down which could let you map the other dpad to the same dpad.
  Or you could make it so that a double click on the dpad becomes a click for the other dpad.
  Also if you use the steam version of retroarch to emulate the game via steam (which is free) then you will find community provided layouts for the N64 controller for pretty much all the modern controllers.
  
  Yup, this is how I use it. Left trigger is Z, Right trigger doesn't exist in N64 so it becomes a context button to turn ABXY into the appropriate C buttons. Right stick is also C for games where the C buttons work like a camera. Using the context button takes a bit of learning, but I like that this approach leaves buttons in roughly the same place (i.e. not mapping any face buttons to shoulders or triggers)

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.

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