I Bought 7 BROKEN NES Games - Let's Try To Fix Them

Really appreciate how you remind us of how things are supposed to work, like when you are testing continuity (we should hear a beep, etc). Really helps those of us who enjoy learning from your videos. Thanks, Steve!

the fact the he actually put time into working on a 5 dollar game with that many deficiencies says a lot

I just did my first trace repair a couple of days ago. It was a copy of Pokémon Sapphire that had a ton of soda in it. It had seven completely broken traces and a ton more slightly corroded. Years ago my aunt had been clearing out my cousin's stuff after he moved out and gave me all of his Pokémon things, fast forward about 15 years and I finally have the skills needed to do that kind of repair. It boots up and plays fine now, but I think I’ll replace the other traces. Once I’m completely finished, I think I’ll return it so he can let his son play it.

Most of the big chips are ROMs. They can be replaced with easy to purchase EEPROMS and then programmed with the game code. The game won't be "original" after that, but it will work.

I recommend using a copper brush instead of scraping; it will be cleaner and you won't damage anything. Also, it seems more convenient to me to use just bare copper wire instead of insulated wire. This allows you to work faster and not overheat the board by burning away the insulation. Then I would insulate the wire bridges with solder mask that you can quickly harden with UV light.

On the Super Mario 2 game, it looks like the short can be coming from the traces between the 2 big chips on the right at 18:09. They mask is all scratched off and they look like they can be shorting with eachother.

RC Pro Am. The chip that is shot is just the CIC chip which is only used for copy protection. It can probably be desoldered and replaced by an identical CIC chip from another broken game and be made to work.

18:17. You can still replace the work ram chip in these types of cartridges. In your case it is the top right chip (It usually also says what type of chip it is on the cartridge like rom or ram) You can try to find cheaper games that use the same type of w-ram chip or find a replacement.

I love you trying to repair the old games as well! Would love to see some old consoles (n64, GameCube, sega genesis, etc)

Brasso and other metal polishes typically have ammonia in them and I've seen that eat traces over time. The best solution I've used is a fiberglass pen to clean the contacts.

The Nintendo brand chip on all of the carts is the 10NES lockout chip. If the NES doesn't blink, all traces going to that chip are 100% good.

Ads are still running but “The Immortal” is often sold as “broken” merely because it causes modern TVs to glitch with an out of spec “blacker than black,” black color. I actually patched the ROM to fix this. :)

I really love it when you’re going out of your comfort zone with products you’ve never worked on. It really helps for us in the future when we encounter the same thing. Good Job Steve!

I have a good feeling your NES have a pretty poor 72 pin connector too, you should check that out to rule out problems related to connecting issues too. it is especially typical when you get weird artifacts in the picture you have a poor contact and the game might actually be fine. remember there is also a second row of pins hidden deeper inside that connector too that is equally guilty for poor contact with the game as the outer row. good to see good ol games come back to life :)

I had no idea that my favorite games were so simple looking inside their cartridges. This was a very interesting to watch.

I've never attempted a repair as intricate as the simplest things you do in your videos but because of your knowledge and explanation i feel like some day ill be able too. keep up the awesome content man we all need people like you on YT.

Wow, Immortal, what a pleasure to see it again after so many years. Thats like one of the hardest, most unforgiving games i ever played. The dark atmosphere works so well for such an old game.

It looks like the Supermario 2's electrolytic capacitor is dilated at the bottom. In my opinion, it is more convenient when desoldering components when a short circuit occurs, to also test them outside the circuit, and put them back on only after all components have been unsoldered. This is because some defective parts can give a false positive by interacting with each other. And a final tip for liquid damage is: use water instead of isopropanol, usually the base of the liquid (drinks, soup, etc.) that caused the corrosion.

Just found your channel I'm about 30 videos in. You have inspired me to give repair/restorations a try. It's not as crazy as I thought it would be.

Its crazy if you stop to think that each one of these game cartridges has a story and presumably a play history in which someone somewhere enjoyed them.