Several unresponsive N64 cartridges

Thanks for the tip! The game store gave me a copy of Yoshi's Island with similar broken traces. It will be my first test subject with the tool.

 

Nice fix! Good luck with Yoshi's Island.

 

How do these games get broken traces? Do people just open them up and cut them or do they get worn out over time and just break? Anyway, nice job fixing them! I'll definitely try these repairs if I get similar problems with cartridge games.

 

Some of the wear might be from friction from the black plastic dust protector. Although I fixed a few carts that don't have any visible signs of wear. The world may never know.

 

Never thought that would cause any issues. Maybe someone could get a cheap sports game and rig up a machine to try and see how long it would take to break it by inserting and removing the cart from an N64 or the cart connector on a piece of stripboard. Of course they should also repair it afterwards so it is still playable.

 

I've noticed some of my games as well have some damage caused by the black plastic strip. I may rig up something to hold it in place.

 

Where is this black plastic strip? Is it inside the cart? I've never opened an N64 cart before (I have opened the console though and installed a blue LED) so a pic would be nice.

 

It's the dust protector for the cartridge. It goes in between the gold fingers.

 

Oh ok. Thank you. That board is small, what game is it?

 

Sorry, I don't really know. I got it from here.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Disassembling+Nintendo+64+Cartridge/3583

 

I don't know the specific game, but Starfox 64 had that board shape.

 

Assuming it's the same board as the one in the later photos, it's NUS-NGEE - which is Goldeneye 007

 

I used to have Goldeneye 007 but I regrettably sold it because it would only work if the game was inserted and constantly held at angle. I only got it working perfectly a couple times.

 

Hey everybody! Sorry for the bump, but because of this thread I've gone on to repair several cartridges for the NES, SNES, and N64. Thank you so much!

I made a video of me checking out a special game for the N64 if you're interested in repairing cartridges as well. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9ELEu38mk