So I picked up an AES today... Haven't owned once since I bought a Gold system in 1995 just to play Samurai Showdown 2. Was playing KOF '96 on it, and it froze up once in my second match and after I reset, it froze again in the first match. What freezes is the sprites. The music keeps going. Oh, wow how much better is that Neo CD much, huh? Anyway, it's night here in Japan and I'll test it further tomorrow; but what's the community opinion? Just clean the connectors on the cart? Is it a board issue? A signal aliens are invading?
As stated do clean the contacts, also check how hot the PSU is getting as if it is getting as a bad PSU can cause issues too.
It's definitely a bad connection to the CPU (the sound system is independent) and that can be through the connector, or from a bad trace or solder joint on the cart or in the console. Clean the console's edge connector and the game's gold fingers, specifically at the top-right half of the second/bottom PCB when looking at the face of the cart. If that doesn't work try an older game, that will narrow down the cause.
Agreed, I had similar issues on a MVS board. I removed both the Video and Sound board and cleaned them both - Now working fine.
