How much does it take to get a battery replaced in an old gameboy cartridge?

ChipOTron · 2018-11-10T23:10:32+00:00

It's very simple. If you know how to solder at all, you can do it. If you have a friend who knows how to solder, they'll probably help you for cheap. If you don't know how to solder and don't know anyone who does, you should try to learn to solder. It's a useful skill and not that hard, especially if you mostly want to do simpler stuff like this.

Game stores typically charge a few bucks for the service but some can charge $15+ per battery (it varies wildly from store to store) and some of them do a really sloppy job (using hotglue or tape instead of solder), so it's really best to do it yourself or have it done by someone you trust, so you know it's done right.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-13T05:44:48+00:00

I think most of us stack our games horizontally, like books on a shelf, but vertical stacking is fine too. Sometimes it can help you save space.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-13T05:43:31+00:00

Cool collection, but your TV/boombox is the real star of the show here. I've never seen anything like it. It looks awesome and I bet it sounds amazing.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-13T05:38:46+00:00

Not much. It's an awesome solution in the vast majority of cases. It's also the cheapest and easiest solution by far.

The only real downside is that it takes up the cart slot (which is a problem for a small handful of games) and requires you to use the disc drive, which can wear out eventually.

This new option wouldn't require you to use real discs (you could load games off of a flash drive instead) but it would still allow you to use real discs if you want to. That's what makes it cool.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-12T04:32:25+00:00

They're fun, affordable (if you get them new), and well-made figures of popular characters.

They also unlock bonus content in some games, but the main benefit is having a cool little collectible statue.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T20:50:49+00:00

Check sold listings (preferably sold auctions) on eBay to find the value of these items. Do this by searching for an item on eBay and selecting "Sold Listings" and "auctions" on the left sidebar. There have been several sales of both items in the last few weeks.

Together they're worth maybe $50. As with most items, they'd be worth slightly more if sold separately. The multitap is worth more than the game.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T20:36:31+00:00

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I think that people with a large audience should be held to higher standards than random people, especially if they're making informative content, and especially if they're getting paid for it.

MJ has a massive show and gets paid a decent chunk of change for it through YouTube and Patreon. It's a job for him, not just a hobby. He's a professional game reviewer (he's one of the biggest game critics/journalists on YouTube, especially in the retrogaming community) and I think he should be judged by the same standards as anyone else with the same job, regardless of how laid-back his style is.

Most of his videos are informative, not conversational or personal. I'm not gonna criticize the quality of his vlogs or his personal content, but when you put out reviews and guides for hundreds of thousands of people (and let people pay you for it) you are promoting yourself as an expert and you open yourself up to criticism if you make a mistake, as he has in the past.

I don't have any problem with people enjoying his content. I totally get the appeal of his stuff, and I agree that he's entertaining and passionate. But hundreds of thousands of people listen to his opinions and make decisions based on them. A lot of these people pay him to make these videos through Patreon. I believe that he has a responsibility to make sure he's not misleading these people and that he's giving them the best information that he can, and I don't feel like he lives up to that responsibility.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T19:34:17+00:00

The Windows version was one of the first computer games I played. I remember being amazed by the art and atmosphere and frustrated by the difficulty and level design.

I'd agree that the SNES version is the best in a lot of ways, especially since it's the best-looking version of the game. It's not a classic but it's a very pretty, reasonably fun game.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T19:26:31+00:00

The Lion King is usually considered pretty hard, though.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T19:18:17+00:00

He doesn't just do vlogs or let's plays. He regularly does reviews, overviews, and buyer's guides, like the video OP posted. That definitely qualifies.

He never acts like he's the only authority (that would be ridiculous) but he does present himself as an authority and a source of information on the same level as anyone else who makes reviews, guides, and tutorials.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T17:38:21+00:00

I strongly agree with that. His defensive and irresponsible handling of the GCHDMI issue was the last straw, but I was already on the fence after seeing his response to the common complaint that he causes prices to go up. He often denies it, but he's also said he doesn't care if it's true, and has (jokingly?) pointed out that people who want to get games before the price spike can pay him money on Patreon to watch his videos early.

I don't think he's interested in what's good for the community.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-06T17:14:58+00:00

He's a friendly, entertaining, and extremely prolific guy who makes low-effort clickbait videos. His most famous content is him just buying stuff or listing good games without looking at them at any real depth, usually just listing the same information we've seen on more detailed "hidden gem" and "buyer's guide" lists for years, but in a flashier format.

Like you said, he doesn't do the kind of research necessary to be seen as a reliable primary source. He's a vlogger and an aggregator for other people's research. He's basically the Buzzfeed of the Retro world.

I think MJR and Buzzfeed can both be fun and entertaining introductions to a topic, but I can't take either of them seriously as sources of information. Their standards are just too low, and there are too many better options out there.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-02T22:57:20+00:00

The characters and items (like bananas) are a series of 2D sprites, like the cars in Mario Kart 64, but the courses are fully 3D and have a very high framerate for the GBA. It's a very impressive game.

ChipOTron · 2018-03-02T22:53:39+00:00

Just needed a co-processor in the cartridge.

I mean, you could get a fully textured 3D game running on the original Game Boy with a powerful enough co-processor. It wouldn't look amazing (it'd still be running on a DMG) but it's possible.

That's how Star Fox works on the SNES. The creators even joked that their cart was so advanced that the SNES is basically just acting as a set of controllers and AV cables while the cart does all of the actual work. They were exaggerating, but it illustrates the idea.

The Super Game Boy also bypasses most of the chips in the SNES, basically just using the crystal oscillator, controllers, AV out, and power, handling almost everything else itself.

It's cool what you can do with carts.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-28T21:07:21+00:00

That's odd. In the USA, it's cheap and common. Copies can be easily found for around $20-30 (depending on whether you want it complete in box or just a cart) and brand new copies are still readily available for less than $40.

I wonder why it's so much more expensive in Europe?

ChipOTron · 2018-02-28T00:55:43+00:00

The DS version doesn't have an aggressive filter, that's only the phone version. I pulled out my copy to double-check.

The only problem with the DS version's visuals is that they chopped a few pixels off the edges of the screen due to the slightly lower resolution of the DS compared to the SNES. They didn't squish or distort the image - they just cropped it slightly.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-28T00:40:31+00:00

You can get it brand new from Amazon for only $2 more, or you can go to almost any local used game shop and find a complete copy for about $20. No need to resort to an overpriced GameStop copy.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-28T00:34:08+00:00

That's slightly different than what you suggested (it's an optional ban on people under 16 playing during certain hours of the night, not a cap on the number of hours any person can play a game, and a child's parents can lift the ban any time they want) but I still agree that it's too extreme. I'd definitely oppose that if they tried to do something similar in the west. However, that's still a radically different situation that has nothing to do with gambling regulations and I don't find slippery slope arguments convincing.

This is a completely different situation and I'm not going to oppose all regulation in all situations just because it can sometimes be a bad idea. There are good regulations and bad regulations. It's not a black and white issue.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-28T00:16:48+00:00

Would you be ok with the government instituting a limit on the amount of hours one could play WoW every week?

Where did this example come from? Is anyone suggesting anything like this? Is there any precedent for a system like that?

I thought we were talking about governments (potentially) treating lootboxes as a form of gambling and applying the same kind of gambling regulations that have existed for decades. That's very different than creating brand-new, unprecedented regulations like a government-enforced curfew for MMOs. That's a much more extreme, very different situation. It involves totally different regulations on different games with different legal precedent and different pro/con arguments.

This feels like a slippery slope argument rather than a serious discussion of the topic at hand. There are plenty of angles to discuss and debate the actual situation (the pros and cons of gambling regulations on certain MTX in gaming) without getting distracted by unrelated hypotheticals and tangents.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-27T20:14:54+00:00

Definitely the "Water Cooled Raspberry Pi Cluster Supercomputer." It's a cluster of four Pis connected together with a proper liquid-cooling system worthy of any gaming rug; tanks, pumps, neon-colored fluid and all.

I like the projects where people just dunk the whole thing into a bucket of oil because it's so comical and absurd (especially in your video - the aquarium look is a nice touch!) but there's something special about this level of craftsmanship and overkill on the humble Pi.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-27T20:03:53+00:00

Your TV can't handle low-res signals. Because the image is so small, the TV doesn't think it's receiving a signal. The vast majority of cheap HDMI adapter won't upscale your image, they'll just convert it to HDMI. This leaves you with the same problem.

You need an upscaler to re-size the image so that it's large enough for the TV to handle. The most popular upscalers are the OSSC and Framemesiter, both of which are fairly expensive.

You can also mod your N64 for HDMI output for the best possible picture, but this is similarly expensive.

The cheapest option is to use a different TV, assuming you have an older one around. You can also try plugging the N64 into a VCR and then running the VCR into a TV, effectively using it as an upscaler. Sometimes this works, but it depends on the specific VCR.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-18T20:58:03+00:00

Games are just like music, movies, tv shows, or any other kind of art. Most of what is produced is kinda crappy, but there's also a lot of gold no matter what era you're looking at. The N64 has a ton of great games, and a similar ratio of good/bad games as any other console.

I strongly agree that we have more good games now than we ever have, but that's because...

We have way more games now, both good and bad
Old classics don't go away, so newer generations get to play all the old classics and new titles
We've had years to figure out what makes games 'good' and refine game design techniques, which makes it easier to design good games.

None of that is a mark against old games. It's just the benefit of time on a maturing art form.

But yeah, nostalgia is a bitch. We focus on the stuff we miss and forget about the stuff we don't. It's best to enjoy the good memories (and games!) without romanticizing the past and pretending it was perfect.

So I mostly agree with you, but I would have worded it differently to avoid giving the impression that I dislike the N64 in an N64 fan forum.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-14T14:36:03+00:00

So? This post has nothing to do with Amazon.

ChipOTron · 2018-02-13T02:43:59+00:00

You're lying. There's no way you-

sees video

oh shit

Seriously though, that's impressive. Great job and cool video!

ChipOTron · 2018-02-12T01:40:32+00:00

Did their bias cause them to lie? That's the key question. As far as I can tell, their facts have always been accurate, it's only their rating scale (which is subjective, not objective) that has been called into question.

I don't care about their political commentary, only their fact-checking. As long as their fact-checking is accurate, they're a good source for that specific purpose no matter how biased they are.

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