Tag: gameboy

What the listing stated:

You will receive what you see in the photos, please look at the photos as this is part of my description to show you what you would be receiving. Please note the game comes up with the main Game Boy & Nintendo screen & then won’t go any further, as you can see👀in the photo. 

Any questions please feel free to ask. 

EBay

Hopefully this will be a simple repair, but who knows it might just be a little more technical.

This game is built for the game boy colour console and is an original Nintendo product, it is the Pokémon pinball game. I’ve purchased something I never normally buy and usually detest buying, an item with the battery cover missing. Damn it, there is a fortune waiting to be made by anyone who owns a decent 3D printer, with the amount of missing battery covers that are waiting to be reproduced out there. Edit: ( Just looked on line and it seems the gaming community are already on the case, loads of options available, great to see) Anyway I’ve brought this unit as it can either be kept to await a suitable battery cover or passed straight on. Edit#2: I have, in anticipation of its arrival already ordered a suitable 3D replacement cover from a UK company. It was probably the best priced and best looking print to be honest, some of the others looked a little rough and postage was excessive to say the least. These guys at Cool spot gaming were the best in my opinion.

Released in Japan in 1999 this game made it to European shores in 2000.

These games came with a rumble pack at the top of the cartridge that simulates the vibrations of a normal pinball machine, and I believe this is what the single cell AAA battery is for. And as it is a black cartridge this indicates it can be used on the GameBoy colour and original versions. I have purchased this for about half the price that a good working one with battery cover sells for, now that I’ve had to pay for a 3D replacement battery cover I now move into the higher end price of the cartridge valuation, however I do have a few pounds worth of wriggle room should I decide to sell, considering most of the ones on sale at the moment are missing the battery cover and commanding horrendously high prices. I’m comfortable with that. That said it will go into my personal GameBoy collection anyway. Let’s get it working.

Here’s a link to the actual 3D print program for the battery cover on Thingiverse, if you should ever wish to print one yourself. I have absolutely no idea about 3D printing so this is just like brain surgery to me: 3D print program

Assessment

A nice tidy little package has arrived clean, battery cover missing as stated and exterior looks nice and clean. Original label is intact.

Repair:

New 3D battery cover has arrived and this fits perfectly, no issues here.

I’ve placed the unit into my GameBoy to check what occurs, and just as posted it does not progress beyond the Nintendo start up screen. I’ve opened the cartridge to do some basic checks and cleaning, the cartridge contacts have been cleaned using an eraser and some IPA, but in all honesty they were already pretty clean. I’ve checked the onboard battery and this is healthy at 3v as it should be. Cleaning competed, I recheck the game and the results are the same.

Next I’m going to reflow the joints on the ROM chip on the right hand side of the board, the one that has the letters MX on it. These pins or the ones on the RAM chip directly beside it are well known for having bad contacts and often need reflowing/tacking down. It’s something that seems to occur over a period of time on these game cartridges, just plain bad contacts.

All items on the board have been reflowed using hot air, with extra attention being paid to the two chips described in the picture above. I removed the battery prior to doing this as the last thing you want is exploding batteries. With the battery back in place and the game now reassembled it’s now time to test.

And it works including the rumble pack feature.

I can only presume the hot air reflow has fixed an issue with joint continuity on one of these chips as expected. Excellent, another item has been saved from the bin and can now be added to my collection.

Another little project to put to bed, there always seems to be an issue with these games after a good number of years where the solder joints just become unstable. I don’t know if it was the solder quality they used all those years ago or the heavy use and abuse the games endured during their hey day. At least we can fix them and ensure they are still good to go and enjoy for a few more years yet.

Thanks for passing by.