This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

Snip3r95 found an old Pokémon cartridge while wandering around a flea market. The game only set them back $US5 ($7), but actually getting the Game Boy classic up and running required some serious elbow grease.

“It was at the bottom of a bin and in pretty bad shape,” Snip3r95 wrote in a post on Imgur documenting the project. The game wouldn’t properly boot up, so they unscrewed the back and dismantled the game to reveal a bunch of dirt and rust underneath.

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

“Jesus, I’ve never seen a game this corroded before,” continued Snip3r95. “The leads on the chip in the bottom right are almost completely eroded away, many of the posts are just straight up gone. Also, hmm…no save battery. Someone’s worked on this before.”

In order to try and fix the game, Snip3r95 de-capped the chip with a heat gun, and set to work on trying to replace the leads going into it.

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

Most interestingly, they found replacements for the leads by pillaging an old rumble motor from a PS2 controller.

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

They then set to soldering the chip back onto the circuit board and afterwards reassembled the cartridge.

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokemon Red

The game worked, without even blowing it! For anyone without an old Pokémon Red Game Boy cart or the means to fix one even if they did, the game is still available on the 3DS Virtual Console for twice what Snip3r95 paid.


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