SNES Hardware Issue? Graphics glitched

[xerocalibur]

Hey all,

Just dug out my old SNES to hopefully work on it, still debating whether or not to turn it into a portable or not.

However, when testing it, I noticed some of the games are glitching -- they all load fine but then proceed to glitch.

For instance, Super Metroid... I have a save game with 2 hrs 30 min, saved right near Mother Brain. When I load it up, Samus is in the save tube... but the rest of the room is glitched. Upon leaving the save room, Samus gets stuck in a wall, and the entire screen is glitched.

Another game which has issues is Final Fantasy 3 (or 6, depending on your mood)... Loads fine, save game screen is fine, but when you load the game itself, the character sprites and world map are screwed up. My airship was flying around, and I chose to go "on deck"... and when I did, my characters began walking left... and broke the game. The screen kept scrolling horizontally, and character sprites would "walk off" the screen, walk over a black screen, and then back onto the screen, going from to the left at all times.

Any ideas? Could the carts be fowled up? Or is it the hardware? I do notice that Mega Man X works OK, though I only played the intro stage... and Star Fox is fine, though again I only played the first level.

Hope my carts aren't dead! Any advice??

[Rekarp]

Sounds like a dirty cart slot or bent pins.

http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/ninte ... itches.htm

[bacteria]

I have some SNES consoles; plugged one of them in yesterday, funnily enough to play Super Metroid, for the first time; and a few other games to see if I liked them or not. Most of the carts needed a blow before they loaded in the SNES; one started, with lots of graphical errors, I removed it, blew on the game cart contacts; retried, worked fine.

Blow on the contacts on the cart game; if that fails, open the game cart, use a pencil eraser to rub over the pin connectors and remove the gunk; then try the game again - should work.

The SNES system and games are old now, so you will expect such problems unfortunately!

[Rekarp]

Btw blowing in carts is a bad way to "fix" the issue. Over time the contacts will become more corroded. Best way to fix the problem is to open up the cart and rub some fine steel wool on the contacts. Don't rub to hard. Then clean the contacts with some +90% rubbing alcohol. Invest in some dust covers and you should be set. I have some carts that I cleaned 3 years ago using this method and I haven't had to blow in them since.

[xerocalibur]

Thing is, we kept very good care of our games, and most have the "dust covers" -- the only ones that do not are ones that did not come with them when Nintendo phased them out. The games were kept in the basement for a while, though -- a few years. Maybe humidity got to them and corroded the contacts.

I will try to clean the carts, and report back. You guys don't think it's the SNES deck itself, though?