Retro Gamer Problems

So, as I so clearly stated in my project goals, a big part of what I want to do is play all of the games in their original formats on their original consoles.

Now, I have an NES. An NES 2, in fact, which are a bit more reliable than their predecessors as they don't get the issue of the 72-pin connector losing its connectivity over time due to the game-reading pins getting pushed down (although the video quality isn't exactly the best.) I still have the SNES I opened on Christmas morning when I was 3, which has always worked faithfully for my entire life, and is probably one of my most treasured possessions.

Cake, right?

At this point, the biggest challenge appeared to be the battery issue in the old console games. For those of you that don't know, there's actually button-cell batteries in any old console game that saved data, because there needs to be a tiny amount of electricity running through the circuits to keep the data in memory. However, after 10, 20 or 30 years, this battery finally dies and you'll find yourself unable to save new data. Even if my games still appeared to have working batteries, I wasn't going to chance me being halfway through a huge JRPG and losing my save data, so I decided that I was going to replace the batteries in my cartridges. I'm not a stranger to soldering and took a few electrical engineering courses in college, so no big deal.

I decided I'd go through and actually order some battery clips to solder into my game cartridges, otherwise I'd need to solder the battery directly in without being able to remove it (and that's how the cartridges are by default). It turned out that the parts I wanted wouldn't be in stock fore a few months. Okay, fine. That's a small setback, but no big deal. I also went ahead and invested in a better soldering iron, because an iron that isn't hot enough to correctly melt the solder has the chance of doing more damage than one that is hot enough to begin with.

So, let's enter streaming. My kindhearted SO gave me a game capture device for Christmas this past year, one that I could play console games on and then have it output to both the TV and my computer. Well, turns out I need something with at least a composite output to use this streaming equipment. The NES 2 only has an RF output, and turns out there's no such thing as an RF-to-Composite converter. So, that means I needed an O.G. front-loader NES. And if I got a front-loader NES, I knew I'd have to deal with the 72-pin connector issue.

Anyway, I ended up getting a front-loader NES from a buddy, and had to replace the 72-pin connector inside of it after spending a LOT of time trying to get the original connector to work (the original connector is always the best thing to use if you can salvage it.) There's a lot of ways to get the thing to work, from trying to manually un-flatten the pins with an eyeglass screwdriver to straight-up boiling it. I tried most of them. Didn't work. Put in the new connector. Can now play Final Fantasy on the NES.

Meanwhile, I had gotten all of my battery-replacement supplies and opened up the game cartridge to take a look at it. It's very obvious some soldering work had already been done on the battery. The real question: do I be lazy and hope that battery is still good and won't die on me halfway through my play-through? Or do I just replace it anyway?

Spoiler alert: I will probably be lazy and tempt fate.

(Edit: Finished post after a year and a half.)