Hi Steve, I used to have a business repairing electronic musical instruments and came across this resin in a synth that I was fixing. The resin breaks down over time and sort of becomes a capacitor, thereby stopping the chips from working properly. The fix simply involved soaking the circuit boards in acetone (nail polish remover) overnight. The next day, I could peel off the resin and the circuit came back to life! It might not be the same with your games but it's worth a try eh? Keep making the videos, they're great entertainment.
The seller may not have even known himself that they were fake. It's likely they received the or bought them thinking they are real. The scammer is the company in China 30-odd years ago who made these carts and sold them on to retailers.
@@VVGRestoration I'm inclined to agree in regard to the likely age, however, I completely disagree to the ignorance of the seller. The quality of the box is one thing (a serious thing to ignore in its own right) but I have never seen a ziplock bag used on retail carts and the fact that they would've noticed it didn't work immediately after receiving it... red flags is all I'll say on the matter directly. I will add that it isn't unlikely that someone looking to make a quick buck trading carts bought a few fakes (some not working) but figured it was cheap enough to net a profit and sell defective ones as "non-functioning" genuine rather than never working fakes. This is all speculation of course, we will never know the truth, however we are afforded this lesson of cautious vigilance at little personal cost.
1000% fake everything on the GBA stuff. But noble efforts in trying to make them work. I've binged your channel over the last month and you're one of my favorites to watch now. You really have found "your TH-cam Voice". Keep up the great work!
The black blobs are a dead giveaway. It's what some use to cover bad solder joints, so the carts get a little extra life to them. For the scammer they're hoping it'll last long enough to get past the refund window on ebay.
@@paulghignon4092 The missing serial numbers over the contacts is a dead giveaway, even without opening the cartridges up. That and the US age ratings on them, quite rare to see originals with these ratings in Europe.
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo I mean if we're being honest it's a laundry list of things. Clearly who ever made these counterfeits did an extensively poor job. You could probably pass these around to 20 different people and they'd all give different reasons that stood out immediately.
@@paulghignon4092 I am somewhat sure those were made when the original games were still on sale. You could buy these pirated versions at flea markets and so on.
Discovered Steve’s channel whilst I was in hospital recently. Easily the best and most entertaining repair channel I’ve seen. The raps are simply spot-on too…..🤣 keep ‘em coming Steve mate x
@@StezStixFixYour producing super entertaining stuff Steve, the other day my uPvc double door broke, said f it, may as well give it a go... Little drill press here, tap and die and epoxy and its.. what is it you say.. Better than factory :)
First thought the boxes look incredibly fake, but even the plastic the cartridges are made from doesn't look right either, plus I've noticed that with clone carts, they tend to stick out a teeny-tiny bit above the game slot. Not surprising when you opened them up they looked like that, good stuff as always Steve
btw, IPA also works like magic for removing hotglue - just a few drops, let them crawl under the glue and after a few seconds you can take off the glue like its never been glued😉 (not that there is any hotglue in this video but it might come in handy later down the line)
Well that is just plain weird because I watched atomic shrimp after this and he indeed wanted to use IPA to dissolve some hot glue, tried meths, and ultimately put the glued item on the stove!
The best way to tell once you’ve got the cart open: the ROM chip will have the game’s serial number printed on it, and on the back of the board is the 4-square date code. You can see the date code on the back of the GBC games at the start of the video.
Man, this channel is exploding with new subscribers! Every time you upload you almost double your subs, it's incredible. When I first started watching at the start of this year you had like 2-3k subs, now you're at 30k!! Damn good job mate. Keep it going!
Hi steve. Pity about those 3 games, but another great video nonetheless! On another note I just finished uploading the firefox f7 repair video. It was a different fault to the one that you repaired.
My thoughts on why the pins get loose is because its where you grab the cartridge to push it in and pull it out. Possibly putting pressure on the chip.
I haven't been invested in watching all the videos of a new channel I found, for a long time. I don't know what it is you got, but you got it. Exception are those that don't show your face. Your "on screen presence" is a vital part of the whole experience. Keep it up!
I love that every new video I check your subs and it's climbing! Congrats man, entertaining content and people are liking it! You should be getting some sponsors come calling now
I'm pretty sure Nintendo don't soldier little boards with the chips on them to another board which you insert into the gameboy. Love the work you do Steve, keep it up 👍🏻
actually they did, but definitely not those cartridges :P they had daughter boards for stuff like the IR functionality in DS games and other "fancy" cartridges like that though.
The first thing I look for when I suspect a fake GBA game is if I can find a number or letter stamped on the cartridge's label. It's embossed and I have never seen a reproduction going as far as trying to copy that. If you open a cartridge and see black blobs it's a fake one. A battery is also most likely a sign of fake. They are used to keep save files on reproduction but real cartridges don't have batteries unless it's a Pokemon game with a clock feature.
That not always the case on GBA games with a battery. I have a US copy of Metroid Fusion which is genuine but has a battery for the save. The game has 2 board revisions. Mine is the earlier board with a battery. The second revision switched the save to SRAM and eliminated the battery.
@@TheAlphaWolf2013 Yeah there are like 25ish GBA games that have a battery out of the 1500 games but when you see those they can't be mistaken for reproduction either. No huge black blobs and they have the Nintendo name on the board. I bought Donkey Kong Country 1 from Ebay and when I got it the game worked but save files got deleted when you turned off the console. I thought the battery was dead and opened it and indeed there was a dead battery but that's when I realized it was fake. Looking online I found out DKC is not one of the games that originally had a battery.
I had a fake pokemon emerald cartridge once. You could tell it was fake as the material that made the casing felt cheap and whenever playing the game, it would constantly freeze while saving and corrupt your save as well. It annoys me that second hand shops are selling fakes as they don't know how to tell the difference
Just wonderful as always. I don't even do any of this stuff but it's interesting to watch and your humor and editing is fantastic. I hope you get a few hundred k more subscribers, you deserve it!
Sadly, not much you can do with fake games once they stop working. All you can do is give them a cleaning and check for any obvious damage. If that doesn't work, the chips on the board are almost certainly dead and there's nothing you can do about it.
Same here. first thing I do is check the label for the stamped number. When I was building my GBA collection I got pretty good at spotting fakes even from pictures. The stamped numbers is not always easy to spot on pictures but the font of the Gameboy Advance logo above the label is slightly different on reproduction. Once you have seen a real and fake side by side and look at the logo it gets easier to spot when it's off.
@@chamoo232 Sadly thanks to some of these games becomming more valuable there are some really good fakes out there. And I've also had a pirated copy of a game that had the stamped in number and I've seen a few videos here with definitely original games that don't have the stamped number.
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo It shouldn't be the only thing you judge a game by but for me it's the first thing I check even before I open the shell. Checking the board will always be the best thing to do.
HAH! I absolutely LOVED when a mouse cursor appears out of nowhere and you autosort the icons. That made my day! Have watched loads of your videos and do appreciate the editing effort with throwing batteries and such. But this one was the best so far! :D
i bought a copy of forza motorsport 2, sealed off of amazon from a reputable seller. while the game disk and manual were genuine, the box art was obviously fake. i contacted them about it, sent photos of the cheaply made cover art and they refunded my money and had me keep the game.
Hi Steve, really been enjoying the content , my question is what do you do with the items you fix ? Do you have an ebay or do you dish them out to family and friends
I found your channel 3 days ago and I am so addicted to watch it. First I came to watch the console and gamecartridge repairs but now I watched through so much else like the singing bass or repairing a pinball machine. x) Great videos! Also this is super motivating to learn something like this as well! :D
Just a tip, if you have those black resin blobs, you can get them off by heating them up to 125-150 degrees with your rework and pluk away any them with cheap pair of tweezers
If someone used a rough abrasive on the pins, they will turn silver. I know that's the case for nes games and I have seen silver pins on some nes and Genesis games. It doesn't necessarily mean it's fake. For NES games, if you see an unusual chip with a glass circle on it, that is an aftermarket game or a fake if advertised as original. I used to make aftermarket and reproduction games, but they were advertised as such.
You can see that these are fakes even without opening them up. Above the contacts there should be a Nintendo logo and a serial number. It's not there, so these are definitely fake. Most Gameboy games (OG, Colour and Advance) with an ESRB rating (US rating) in Europe are fake.
@@davidcameron648 I usually clean the gold plating with an art eraser, works well. I tried sand paper 1 time, and it pulled the gold plating right off...I never used sand paper again.
the vast majority of all fakes are ESRB rated as PAL artwork at a decent enough resolution is less readily available (and counterfeiters don't much care about splitting batches if people are still going to buy them anyway), in our store they're always suspicious.
Before you even said anything, I thought those boxes looked off a bit. Thought maybe it was a Europe difference at first... Then the blob chips... pretty sure that's not standard on GBA carts... I'm assuming they weren't sold as fakes/clones?
The listing didn't say either way, but you would assume they are real unless told otherwise I guess. I probably wouldn't have paid so much if I knew! Still, I got 4 of the genuine ones working (the 2 GB Color and the 2 Mega-Drive) so I guess it's not all bad! 😬
glob top on GBA carts is a massive indicator they're counterfeit. The only time nintendo has used glob tops on official carts from my understanding was early revisions of star fox on SNES and early packins of Tetris on the Gameboy. Mostly due to the holiday rush and they needed the carts out and ready. later revisions used standard chips / ics.
From my experience all nintendo genuine cartrige's have two digit stamped number barely visible (not a print), on a front or back label. Never seen repro with it.
There are actually a few original games that don't have these markings and I've had a repro with the marking, so this isn't a telltale sign anymore. Especially with newer fakes of more expensive games I wouldn't trust that (there are some very good fakes of Trip World out there, for example).
you need to sneak more of the playful raps into the videos,this just made my whole month. Hilarious!! I play your videos every night when I’m veging out with a warm meal. Love it!!
From my experience on fake carts, the pads on the cart that touch the cartridge slot of the console are also very bad quality... The pads degrade quickly and they start to make a bad connection with the console, even when they look kinda shinny. I don't know how to fix a cart pad :S Maybe put solder on top of it? But with solder on top we might damage the pins of the cartridge slot on the console.
bootlegs uses flash memory to store the game rather than mask-rom, so sometimes since they use cheap worn-down chips the game can get erased/corrupted over time, nothing you can do about it. Might explain the few non-working ones.
I just completed my first ever electronics project, an infrared remote control with 8 buttons :D it's so cool making something to fix a problem (eg no TV remote). Need to improve my soldering skills though lol 😆
Oh new repairs. This actually push me to do the same and repair a ps4 I found on a flea market that was damage. I found is the HDMI chip but I never done a chip removal so will be my first.
One thing u should check on the Gameboy games is the battery they fail on those and the game still works till u save the game the battery keeps the ram active on holding the save data steve
Its always super exiting to watch your repair videos. I learned so much trough your past videos and you ale alwya so calm. PLease never stop doint this, I wanna learn more XD
All those gba are fake. If you got that on ebay, just open a claim for counterfeit and ask for full refund. EBay is EXTREMELY harsh on counterfeit. The seller will have not choice to refund you and if he wants those fakes back, he will have to pay full shipping back to him. I did that multiple time and always got the full refund and kept the game since the seller will never want to pay for shipping back.
hit the blobs with hot air it will soften and you should be able to clean it up with IPA. They look like a main board with a daughter board soldered on for the actual game chips. lots of potential bad joints
bruh that song in background was sick like the song from "The gentlemen" movie like weird and ironic but yet sick af enough to bop and add to my Spotify playlist
Definitely just throw them away, repros are awful. I understand it's nice to try and fix things, but repros are just never worth it. Plus, these PCB's don't have ENIG coating or hard gold pins, so the pin bus is going to end up like these have after not very long of inserting/removing from the cartridge slot. Also, just a quick edit, the yoshi's island and such with batteries are "faulty" because you won't be able to save them.
I was most impressed by the rhcp at the end, Steve has height and depth impressive, even more so coz I can imagine him recording with a brew and a hob-nob.
Great video Steve. I've not come across these before but there seems to be a lot of fake stuff going around I've had a few ps4 controllers for repair recently that have been fake but you cant really tell until you open them. Report to ebay you will get full refund and 5 working games :)
Hi Steve I love watching your channel with my 3 year old and I love how you have taught me loads of tricks. Your videos are cool and I love it when you say nice lol. Have a lovely day
Only discovered the account recently but working my way through the back catalogue of videos. Great stuff. (Maybe you already have?) But it would be great to see some a video with details on your equipment, tools, set up etc. Cheers!
Now the flea market season has begun I am definitely going after the gbc games that don't work, I wonder how many have the issue of the loose pin. I normaly didnt buy broken ones (always took a testing gbc with me) but now I am if its price is right.
I've only been doing this for around 2 years, and I started by watching other TH-camrs like My Mate Vince and TronicsFix. Just picked things up as I went along!
Hi Huck! I did a video on it a while back and most of it is still what I use today. I'll look into doing an updated one, but in the meantime, that video is here: th-cam.com/video/gnEtSRYnxGY/w-d-xo.html 👍
GBA games like Yoshi's Island don't use battery-powered SRAM. I've come across maybe five that do, but I swear the majority use some form of solid state like FRAM, EEPROM, or flash (authentic games have silk screened markings for which chip it is).
Yeah, only a small handfull of them use a battery to retain saved data. The Pokemon games also have one but only to keep the time when the cart has no power.
Love your videos Steve. You’ve inspired me to start learning electrical engineering. Recently took on my first baby project and replaced the screen and shell of a faulty PSP 3000. Went pretty well. Can holy hand grenade patrons contact you directly? Like ask you a question? I’d love to know more on your background. I know you didn’t say it here, but Everytime you say the “incorrect amount of thermal paste” it makes me laugh my ass off. I watch a lot of electronics videos and know exactly who you’re talking about. Your videos are the best. As your followers we should start blowing up I fix it to sponsor your videos lol.
😁 thanks Ryan! I have a few PSP's that I'll hopefully get round to soon. I haven't worked on them before, so that should be fun! AFAIK Patreon has a Direct Message feature at all tier-levels. My background isn't that exciting to be honest, I did use to work on the frozen food section at ASDA though. 😂
Thank you so much for your reply Steve! You’re a legend in my book. Your videos are infinitely informative as they are entertaining. You say you don’t know what you’re doing, but I look up to you for your knowledge. Thank you for what you do. I support you and all you’re doing and need to join the patreon.
Nice video thanks. Hey what is the stuff you put on before solder? I read something that said if you use rosin core you don't need flux? Don't know what I'm talking about but appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks Jake! Yeah, there is a small amount of flux in the solder, but I always find that it flows much better with some more! You tend to get little peaks, and it isn't as shiny if you don't use it. 👍
I have 3 tiger electronics wrist watch games and am not able to solder would you be willing to attempt to repair them if I pay for postage and any parts needed+postage back to the US? 1 has a badly stripped screw, another the battery contact is faulty and the last one does no power on. Thanks so much
The 'good' ones were probably included because of bad SRAM batteries. Replacements are hard to find for bootlegs though. So the only option is dodgy bodgy.
Hi Steve, I used to have a business repairing electronic musical instruments and came across this resin in a synth that I was fixing. The resin breaks down over time and sort of becomes a capacitor, thereby stopping the chips from working properly. The fix simply involved soaking the circuit boards in acetone (nail polish remover) overnight. The next day, I could peel off the resin and the circuit came back to life! It might not be the same with your games but it's worth a try eh? Keep making the videos, they're great entertainment.
Thumbs up! Hope he reads this and tries it out!
@Reset Syndrome Yeah but you are talking about knock off's who will do anything for a cost reduction.
@Reset Syndrome yeah, this was a Roland Juno 106 so probably early 80s.
yeh its the resin and the plastics over time that seep into the circuits just need alcohol or acetone
@Reset Syndrome these are chinese knockoffs that will cut any and every corner lol
Hope you reported the scammer, stuff like this shouldn't be allowed much less circulated... they even had the audacity to make fake boxes.
The seller may not have even known himself that they were fake. It's likely they received the or bought them thinking they are real. The scammer is the company in China 30-odd years ago who made these carts and sold them on to retailers.
@@VVGRestoration I'm inclined to agree in regard to the likely age, however, I completely disagree to the ignorance of the seller. The quality of the box is one thing (a serious thing to ignore in its own right) but I have never seen a ziplock bag used on retail carts and the fact that they would've noticed it didn't work immediately after receiving it... red flags is all I'll say on the matter directly.
I will add that it isn't unlikely that someone looking to make a quick buck trading carts bought a few fakes (some not working) but figured it was cheap enough to net a profit and sell defective ones as "non-functioning" genuine rather than never working fakes.
This is all speculation of course, we will never know the truth, however we are afforded this lesson of cautious vigilance at little personal cost.
It’s happening with everything it’s not a new problem,It’s been happening for years and years.
Never hear of Emulation get a life. You ‘GRASS’ !
@@MarcTBGYou ‘GRASS’ got anything better to do in your boring Life.
1000% fake everything on the GBA stuff. But noble efforts in trying to make them work. I've binged your channel over the last month and you're one of my favorites to watch now. You really have found "your TH-cam Voice". Keep up the great work!
The black blobs are a dead giveaway. It's what some use to cover bad solder joints, so the carts get a little extra life to them. For the scammer they're hoping it'll last long enough to get past the refund window on ebay.
@@paulghignon4092 No that's not what it is. It is a COB (chip on board). Google it.
@@paulghignon4092 The missing serial numbers over the contacts is a dead giveaway, even without opening the cartridges up. That and the US age ratings on them, quite rare to see originals with these ratings in Europe.
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo I mean if we're being honest it's a laundry list of things. Clearly who ever made these counterfeits did an extensively poor job. You could probably pass these around to 20 different people and they'd all give different reasons that stood out immediately.
@@paulghignon4092 I am somewhat sure those were made when the original games were still on sale. You could buy these pirated versions at flea markets and so on.
I love it when you repair old consoles. I am really amazed how the gbc cartridges all have the same problem.
Discovered Steve’s channel whilst I was in hospital recently. Easily the best and most entertaining repair channel I’ve seen. The raps are simply spot-on too…..🤣 keep ‘em coming Steve mate x
😁 thanks Mick!
@@StezStixFixYour producing super entertaining stuff Steve, the other day my uPvc double door broke, said f it, may as well give it a go... Little drill press here, tap and die and epoxy and its.. what is it you say.. Better than factory :)
Agreed
The homes creen on youtube is great for finding new youtube channels i find a lot of channels this way .
My mate Vince is better 👌
First thought the boxes look incredibly fake, but even the plastic the cartridges are made from doesn't look right either, plus I've noticed that with clone carts, they tend to stick out a teeny-tiny bit above the game slot. Not surprising when you opened them up they looked like that, good stuff as always Steve
btw, IPA also works like magic for removing hotglue - just a few drops, let them crawl under the glue and after a few seconds you can take off the glue like its never been glued😉
(not that there is any hotglue in this video but it might come in handy later down the line)
I will store this away for future use, thank you.
Well that is just plain weird because I watched atomic shrimp after this and he indeed wanted to use IPA to dissolve some hot glue, tried meths, and ultimately put the glued item on the stove!
IPA, India Pale Ale?
I liked that little auto arrange icons edit. Very creative made me smile.
The best way to tell once you’ve got the cart open: the ROM chip will have the game’s serial number printed on it, and on the back of the board is the 4-square date code. You can see the date code on the back of the GBC games at the start of the video.
Also on the label, real ones will have small imprinted numbers.
Loved the align to grid video transition, glad to see fame hasn’t affected your attention to detail!
😁 thanks Chris!
Man, this channel is exploding with new subscribers! Every time you upload you almost double your subs, it's incredible. When I first started watching at the start of this year you had like 2-3k subs, now you're at 30k!! Damn good job mate. Keep it going!
This is quickly becoming one of my favorite TH-cam channels. I think over the last week or so, I've binged about every one of your videos. Cheers!
Hi steve. Pity about those 3 games, but another great video nonetheless! On another note I just finished uploading the firefox f7 repair video. It was a different fault to the one that you repaired.
Awesome, thanks I'll check that out shortly! 👍
@@StezStixFix Thank you Steve!
My thoughts on why the pins get loose is because its where you grab the cartridge to push it in and pull it out. Possibly putting pressure on the chip.
One of my new favorite channels, makes me want to buy the equipment you have and fix my own games!
my new fave channel aha, so glad i found you Steve, the vids are really relaxing and comforting. Much love and thanks
I haven't been invested in watching all the videos of a new channel I found, for a long time. I don't know what it is you got, but you got it. Exception are those that don't show your face. Your "on screen presence" is a vital part of the whole experience. Keep it up!
Love how it suddenly went from fixing Game Boy games into secret agent decoding a hidden message.
I love that every new video I check your subs and it's climbing! Congrats man, entertaining content and people are liking it! You should be getting some sponsors come calling now
Thanks Chris, I've had a few offers but I'm not sure I want to read out a PCB Way script. I'm gonna hang fire for now I think. 👍
@@StezStixFix I can just skip the promo part! Side income before the record deal is signed
Your ideas and originality for the video design always surprises me... amazing work!
That Gamboy advance with the ips screen is a perfect machine. Nice fixes Steve!
I'm pretty sure Nintendo don't soldier little boards with the chips on them to another board which you insert into the gameboy. Love the work you do Steve, keep it up 👍🏻
actually they did, but definitely not those cartridges :P
they had daughter boards for stuff like the IR functionality in DS games and other "fancy" cartridges like that though.
I LOVE your videos. You have inspired me to learn to weld ever since I started watching your videos!
The first thing I look for when I suspect a fake GBA game is if I can find a number or letter stamped on the cartridge's label. It's embossed and I have never seen a reproduction going as far as trying to copy that. If you open a cartridge and see black blobs it's a fake one. A battery is also most likely a sign of fake. They are used to keep save files on reproduction but real cartridges don't have batteries unless it's a Pokemon game with a clock feature.
That not always the case on GBA games with a battery. I have a US copy of Metroid Fusion which is genuine but has a battery for the save. The game has 2 board revisions. Mine is the earlier board with a battery. The second revision switched the save to SRAM and eliminated the battery.
There are originals without that number (very few, though) and there are fakes with that number.
@@TheAlphaWolf2013 Yeah there are like 25ish GBA games that have a battery out of the 1500 games but when you see those they can't be mistaken for reproduction either. No huge black blobs and they have the Nintendo name on the board. I bought Donkey Kong Country 1 from Ebay and when I got it the game worked but save files got deleted when you turned off the console. I thought the battery was dead and opened it and indeed there was a dead battery but that's when I realized it was fake. Looking online I found out DKC is not one of the games that originally had a battery.
I had a fake pokemon emerald cartridge once. You could tell it was fake as the material that made the casing felt cheap and whenever playing the game, it would constantly freeze while saving and corrupt your save as well. It annoys me that second hand shops are selling fakes as they don't know how to tell the difference
Get in!!! I'm not even 1 minute in and I just had to say that your "sort files" edit was top notch!
Great video as usual mate. I'd definitely send those gba games back though especially if the seller didn't state they were bootleg in the description.
Just wonderful as always. I don't even do any of this stuff but it's interesting to watch and your humor and editing is fantastic. I hope you get a few hundred k more subscribers, you deserve it!
loved the "auto arrange" reminded me of the Amiga
Sadly, not much you can do with fake games once they stop working. All you can do is give them a cleaning and check for any obvious damage. If that doesn't work, the chips on the board are almost certainly dead and there's nothing you can do about it.
It just goes to show how people will pass off dodgy or fake games it happened to me a few years ago but good effort trying to fix them Steve 👍
Always lovely to see someone's solder learning project.
Very easy to tell if a Gameboy game is fake without opening it, if it has no stamped numbers on it. I have never seen a fake one with stamped numbers.
Same here. first thing I do is check the label for the stamped number. When I was building my GBA collection I got pretty good at spotting fakes even from pictures. The stamped numbers is not always easy to spot on pictures but the font of the Gameboy Advance logo above the label is slightly different on reproduction. Once you have seen a real and fake side by side and look at the logo it gets easier to spot when it's off.
@@chamoo232 Sadly thanks to some of these games becomming more valuable there are some really good fakes out there. And I've also had a pirated copy of a game that had the stamped in number and I've seen a few videos here with definitely original games that don't have the stamped number.
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo It shouldn't be the only thing you judge a game by but for me it's the first thing I check even before I open the shell. Checking the board will always be the best thing to do.
Love love love your channel. It actually helps me cope with chronic illness. Can’t thank you enough.
HAH! I absolutely LOVED when a mouse cursor appears out of nowhere and you autosort the icons. That made my day! Have watched loads of your videos and do appreciate the editing effort with throwing batteries and such. But this one was the best so far! :D
Steve you can u are a legend, just discovered your channel and I'm so glad! Thank you my dudeson!
I don't mind clone games as long as they are high quality and clearly inform what they are. These GBA games failed on both fronts.
I guess im not your only new viewer but i think i've found my ASMR. Great work, thanks!
Your videos have inspired me to study electronics. Thank you very much. You are amazing.
Thanks Juan! Good luck with the studies! 👍
i bought a copy of forza motorsport 2, sealed off of amazon from a reputable seller. while the game disk and manual were genuine, the box art was obviously fake. i contacted them about it, sent photos of the cheaply made cover art and they refunded my money and had me keep the game.
Hi Steve, really been enjoying the content , my question is what do you do with the items you fix ? Do you have an ebay or do you dish them out to family and friends
I found your channel 3 days ago and I am so addicted to watch it. First I came to watch the console and gamecartridge repairs but now I watched through so much else like the singing bass or repairing a pinball machine. x) Great videos! Also this is super motivating to learn something like this as well! :D
Just a tip, if you have those black resin blobs, you can get them off by heating them up to 125-150 degrees with your rework and pluk away any them with cheap pair of tweezers
Love your videos sir. Keep up the awesome work.
I've found a good technique that tends to work on most sports titles - if you put them in the bin, the problem goes away. Fire also works.
An excellent idea! I'll put them in the bin, and then set fire to it, just to be safe. 😁
@@StezStixFix Ah, the belt 'n' braces approach; very thorough. :D
I like how the quality of your videos just keeps getting better.
Another point in the "clone cart" basket, I'm 99% sure those contacts should NOT be silver. They should be a brassy gold.
If someone used a rough abrasive on the pins, they will turn silver. I know that's the case for nes games and I have seen silver pins on some nes and Genesis games. It doesn't necessarily mean it's fake. For NES games, if you see an unusual chip with a glass circle on it, that is an aftermarket game or a fake if advertised as original. I used to make aftermarket and reproduction games, but they were advertised as such.
@@toddspangler6669 Right, but often replica boards will forgo whatever coating was used.
You can see that these are fakes even without opening them up. Above the contacts there should be a Nintendo logo and a serial number. It's not there, so these are definitely fake. Most Gameboy games (OG, Colour and Advance) with an ESRB rating (US rating) in Europe are fake.
They did have gold plating, it was just very thin, and looks like it rubbed off from the eraser exposing the nickel plating on the copper contacts.
@@davidcameron648 I usually clean the gold plating with an art eraser, works well. I tried sand paper 1 time, and it pulled the gold plating right off...I never used sand paper again.
the vast majority of all fakes are ESRB rated as PAL artwork at a decent enough resolution is less readily available (and counterfeiters don't much care about splitting batches if people are still going to buy them anyway), in our store they're always suspicious.
Before you even said anything, I thought those boxes looked off a bit. Thought maybe it was a Europe difference at first...
Then the blob chips... pretty sure that's not standard on GBA carts... I'm assuming they weren't sold as fakes/clones?
The listing didn't say either way, but you would assume they are real unless told otherwise I guess. I probably wouldn't have paid so much if I knew! Still, I got 4 of the genuine ones working (the 2 GB Color and the 2 Mega-Drive) so I guess it's not all bad! 😬
glob top on GBA carts is a massive indicator they're counterfeit. The only time nintendo has used glob tops on official carts from my understanding was early revisions of star fox on SNES and early packins of Tetris on the Gameboy. Mostly due to the holiday rush and they needed the carts out and ready. later revisions used standard chips / ics.
Another Good Video, Sorry you got scammed. I really enjoy the content your putting out. Hope you have a good weekend!
From my experience all nintendo genuine cartrige's have two digit stamped number barely visible (not a print), on a front or back label. Never seen repro with it.
There are actually a few original games that don't have these markings and I've had a repro with the marking, so this isn't a telltale sign anymore. Especially with newer fakes of more expensive games I wouldn't trust that (there are some very good fakes of Trip World out there, for example).
It looks like a lot of time and effort went into making these knockoffs. I just don't understand how it is cost effective to sell them so cheap.
They probably pay 2-3 dollars per carridge and buybin bulk in china
Nice Beckham impression 😆 if you had made Beckham work it may have been satisfying to break it again permanently!
Great video Steve love the channel. You should see if you can find a dodgey gamecube to fix up soon? Would love to see that, Cheers for the laughs.
you need to sneak more of the playful raps into the videos,this just made my whole month. Hilarious!! I play your videos every night when I’m veging out with a warm meal. Love it!!
From my experience on fake carts, the pads on the cart that touch the cartridge slot of the console are also very bad quality... The pads degrade quickly and they start to make a bad connection with the console, even when they look kinda shinny. I don't know how to fix a cart pad :S Maybe put solder on top of it? But with solder on top we might damage the pins of the cartridge slot on the console.
bootlegs uses flash memory to store the game rather than mask-rom, so sometimes since they use cheap worn-down chips the game can get erased/corrupted over time, nothing you can do about it.
Might explain the few non-working ones.
I just completed my first ever electronics project, an infrared remote control with 8 buttons :D it's so cool making something to fix a problem (eg no TV remote).
Need to improve my soldering skills though lol 😆
Oh new repairs. This actually push me to do the same and repair a ps4 I found on a flea market that was damage. I found is the HDMI chip but I never done a chip removal so will be my first.
Good luck with the repair Inugamiz! I hope it goes well 🤞
@@StezStixFix Me too but I really dont have any confidence on what temp I should use and air flow settings. But thanks for the encouragement.
One thing u should check on the Gameboy games is the battery they fail on those and the game still works till u save the game the battery keeps the ram active on holding the save data steve
Its always super exiting to watch your repair videos. I learned so much trough your past videos and you ale alwya so calm. PLease never stop doint this, I wanna learn more XD
I’ve never really been a handheld kinda guy. But the library of games is quite intriguing.
All those gba are fake. If you got that on ebay, just open a claim for counterfeit and ask for full refund. EBay is EXTREMELY harsh on counterfeit. The seller will have not choice to refund you and if he wants those fakes back, he will have to pay full shipping back to him. I did that multiple time and always got the full refund and kept the game since the seller will never want to pay for shipping back.
I'm so happy you uploaded a new video! I was running out of content in your channel to watch hahahaha
Dude, you're going pro with the raps and the covers.
hit the blobs with hot air it will soften and you should be able to clean it up with IPA. They look like a main board with a daughter board soldered on for the actual game chips. lots of potential bad joints
bruh that song in background was sick like the song from "The gentlemen" movie like weird and ironic but yet sick af enough to bop and add to my Spotify playlist
I'm so sorry that you have been ripped off Steve? It wasn't my fault great video as always hope you get them working or refunded best of luck bro
Enjoyed you trying to fix stuff its very good
It's crazy how that one pin is mostly the problem!
patreon rap was great. loving the videos 😄
Definitely just throw them away, repros are awful. I understand it's nice to try and fix things, but repros are just never worth it. Plus, these PCB's don't have ENIG coating or hard gold pins, so the pin bus is going to end up like these have after not very long of inserting/removing from the cartridge slot.
Also, just a quick edit, the yoshi's island and such with batteries are "faulty" because you won't be able to save them.
Same happened with my copy of Pokémon red. Just replace the batteries and their ready to go.
I love game cartiges fix videos.Great job Steve!!!👍👍👍🎮🎮🎮🎮
I was most impressed by the rhcp at the end, Steve has height and depth impressive, even more so coz I can imagine him recording with a brew and a hob-nob.
Smudge a bit of white thermal compound on the mystery chips and the markings will magically pop out. 😁
Yep the vcc pin on the ram chip happens a lot on these thin .8 mm boards with flexing over and over
Great video Steve. I've not come across these before but there seems to be a lot of fake stuff going around I've had a few ps4 controllers for repair recently that have been fake but you cant really tell until you open them. Report to ebay you will get full refund and 5 working games :)
Hi Steve I love watching your channel with my 3 year old and I love how you have taught me loads of tricks. Your videos are cool and I love it when you say nice lol. Have a lovely day
Only discovered the account recently but working my way through the back catalogue of videos. Great stuff. (Maybe you already have?) But it would be great to see some a video with details on your equipment, tools, set up etc. Cheers!
Thanks PJ. Yeah, I did one a whil ago but I still use most of the same equipment: th-cam.com/video/gnEtSRYnxGY/w-d-xo.html
Hi Steve, love your channel had to subscribe. Got an amazing skill of fixing things, very entertaining and fun to watch 😄
I wasn't a fan of the singing in earlier videos, but the rapping is bit gangsta. "I approve!", said random youtube guy.
That David Beckham impression was top notch 🤣🤣
Have you ever considered removing all the solder from a board then resoldering it using your opposite hand to then open up a vortex to Ancoats?
Bruh 🤯
Your using that mic from your last repair arent you steve😉👍👍👍 good work! fake games are a nightmare arent they
best patrons introduction ever!
Now the flea market season has begun I am definitely going after the gbc games that don't work, I wonder how many have the issue of the loose pin.
I normaly didnt buy broken ones (always took a testing gbc with me) but now I am if its price is right.
Not sure what it is about your repairs but I enjoy them. How did you learn everything about repairing/circuitry etc.?
I've only been doing this for around 2 years, and I started by watching other TH-camrs like My Mate Vince and TronicsFix. Just picked things up as I went along!
Don't be afraid to try!
Awesome Steve, another beauty. So what’s the deal with the blob chips? Are they a nightmare to take off? Looking forward to
The next one. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Is there a way that you can make a video or a link to your setup that you use to do the repairs? Thanks!!
Hi Huck! I did a video on it a while back and most of it is still what I use today. I'll look into doing an updated one, but in the meantime, that video is here: th-cam.com/video/gnEtSRYnxGY/w-d-xo.html 👍
The “auto arrange icons” by itself made me like and subscribe
You're gonna do it dude. you're a million subs channel in the making
GBA games like Yoshi's Island don't use battery-powered SRAM. I've come across maybe five that do, but I swear the majority use some form of solid state like FRAM, EEPROM, or flash (authentic games have silk screened markings for which chip it is).
Yeah, only a small handfull of them use a battery to retain saved data. The Pokemon games also have one but only to keep the time when the cart has no power.
@@DONK8008 I know the Breath of Fire ports and Wario Land 4, along with at least one of the Metroid games use batteries.
I just subscribed the moment you started to rapping the patreons, that was clever dude hahahaha, I enjoyed every bit of this video!
Do you think you could try and buy faulty jbl speakers because I have always wanted to know how to fix them and what is the most common part to fail
I'll have a look into that 👍
Love your videos Steve. You’ve inspired me to start learning electrical engineering. Recently took on my first baby project and replaced the screen and shell of a faulty PSP 3000. Went pretty well.
Can holy hand grenade patrons contact you directly? Like ask you a question? I’d love to know more on your background.
I know you didn’t say it here, but Everytime you say the “incorrect amount of thermal paste” it makes me laugh my ass off. I watch a lot of electronics videos and know exactly who you’re talking about. Your videos are the best.
As your followers we should start blowing up I fix it to sponsor your videos lol.
😁 thanks Ryan! I have a few PSP's that I'll hopefully get round to soon. I haven't worked on them before, so that should be fun! AFAIK Patreon has a Direct Message feature at all tier-levels. My background isn't that exciting to be honest, I did use to work on the frozen food section at ASDA though. 😂
Thank you so much for your reply Steve! You’re a legend in my book. Your videos are infinitely informative as they are entertaining. You say you don’t know what you’re doing, but I look up to you for your knowledge. Thank you for what you do. I support you and all you’re doing and need to join the patreon.
That DB impression was uncanny
I thought David was doing a guest appearance
Nice video thanks. Hey what is the stuff you put on before solder? I read something that said if you use rosin core you don't need flux? Don't know what I'm talking about but appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks Jake! Yeah, there is a small amount of flux in the solder, but I always find that it flows much better with some more! You tend to get little peaks, and it isn't as shiny if you don't use it. 👍
I have 3 tiger electronics wrist watch games and am not able to solder would you be willing to attempt to repair them if I pay for postage and any parts needed+postage back to the US? 1 has a badly stripped screw, another the battery contact is faulty and the last one does no power on. Thanks so much
The 'good' ones were probably included because of bad SRAM batteries. Replacements are hard to find for bootlegs though. So the only option is dodgy bodgy.
My dude got like 20k subs in a month, congrats!!
Thanks El Bellota! 😁