Gameboy game corrupted graphics after battery soldering

Hi,

In order to refresh my (poor) soldering skills I started with a simple task like soldering a new battery to my Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB) cartridge... but it seems that things didn't go well.

The game now saves OK and I played it from start to end with no problem but... sprites get corrupted in almost every level from time to time.

For example, you jump from a barrel to another and the second barrel animation is corrupted, showing garbled graphics. But then the next barrel is OK. Or the jumping animation gets corrupted in a certain jump but then it returns to normal. It seems random or maybe worse when a lot of sprites are on screen.

Do you have any idea on what could have happened? Any possible fix?

Thanks.

 

Dirty cart slot? Solder blob or something around the GB's ram chips? Check for any bits of loose metal on the GB boards.

 

Yes, start by cleaning the contacts well.

 

I thought I may have fried something but a contacts problem makes more sense. I've tried cleaning the contacts by using alcohol but that made no difference for the moment.

I will try cleaning it better (I will look for a better cleaning product) and I will also check with another Gameboy (to see if the slot could be the problem) this weekend.

 

Get some pics up here for us to examine

 

Coffee filters work amazingly well.

 

I cleaned the contacts again and I tested the cartridge with an original DMG gameboy, as I was testing it with a Gameboy Advance model.

DMG Test
At first, I saw a corrupted "Nintendo" logo at DMG booting sequence. But the game started anyways.
I inserted the game several times until I saw a clean logo.
And, during some gameplay, I couldn't see any graphics corruption.
Sometimes it showed a corrupted logo but turning off/on solved it.
Currently I can't see the corrupted logo anymore.

Gameboy Advance Test
If I insert the cartridge into the Gameboy Advance, it still shows graphics corruption.

I've had no problems with other games in the same GBA but maybe I should check its connector.

 

What I usually do is I get a Q-Tip and wet it a little bit with some water, and I run that over the contacts, then I dry it using the other side. Other than that, check your solder points. Make sure that they all look good, no cold solders.

Hope you can get it working!

 

I've tested the game with a Super Gameboy and it runs well, the same as in the original DMG.

So it seems that I was wrong from the beginning and the error comes from the GBA hardware instead of coming from the game. I've had no problems with other games and because I had recently soldered a new battery to that game I thought I had ruined it. So now the problem seems more difficult to solve...

 

I'm showing some photos about the graphics problem below (the GBA was modified with a AGS-101 backlight screen).
The last thing I've tried is to clean the cartridge slot in the GBA by using a credit card and a cloth with alcohol.

Nothing has changed as I keep getting the graphics problem only in the GBA and only with this game.

 

If I can recall, there is a game on the gameboy that just doesn't work AT ALL on the GBA. I think its Tarzan.....

This page mentions a similar thing at the very bottom http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/gameboy/compatibilitychart.jsp .
Here's a quote:

It doesn't actually list any games, but I remember hearing about it years ago.

Here's a thread that was discussing it once before on another site http://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?151903-Problem-gameboy-games-on-Advance

 

Oh, I was looking for such a problem or compatibility issues but I never found that. Thank you very much AtomizerZero.

Even in the link you posted it refers specifically to the Donkey Kong Land 2 issues:

And that's exactly the issue I am having.

So mistery solved

EDIT: Well, I lost some time trying to repair a game boy cartridge and a GBA but now I've learnt something new... this will probably make me mod an old game boy with a back light to get the most of my gb-only games.