Interesting Game Genie Behavior

[Loremaster]

Ok, so here's the deal. I've recently picked up a couple of Super Famicom games during my trip to Japan; Ranma 1/2: Treasure of the Crimson Cat Gang, and Ranma 1/2: Super Battle.

Not wanting to tear apart my SNES to play them, I decide to pick up a Game Genie. Well, now here we get to interesting behavior. The game genie works great for playing Ranma 1/2: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang. HOWEVER, when I try to play Super Battle, I get nothing but a garbled or blank black screen, only twice having ever gotten it to the RumicSoft splash screen, only to see it garble and crash.

Figuring "Ok, so the cartridge contacts must be filthy", I pick up a jug o' alcomahol and some q-tips, and get to town. No luck. I try the pencil eraser trick with no luck either. Finally, I figure it MUST be the capacitor gone bad, and look up the price.

However, on one final whim, I pop the naked circuit board into the SNES, and lo and behold the damned thing works beautifully. I try the naked circuit board in the game genie, and all I get are garbles/black screen. Is this a known Game Genie problem? Or some sort of anti-piracy measure thinking my Game Genie is a copier?

[MasterJSP]

Just rip the tabs out of the SNES, man. Then you don't have to worry about the Game Genie not being able to play everything.

[Loremaster]

Doesn't exactly help with what's wrong with the Game Genie, and as I said before, I'd rather not mutilate my SNES.

Anyway, I tried the rest of my [rather small] SNES collection. Super Mario World is the only other game that works. F-Zero, Donkey Kong Country, Secret of Evermore, and Mystery of the Circus all just come up black screen.

I tried cleaning the Game Genie, but that hasn't seemed to help. I opened it up, but couldn't see any sort of damage that would cause such behavior.

[Icarus Moonsight]

If I remember correctly, the SNES GG has a full slot, but the side slots are not pinned. If the cart you are using uses those unconnected pins... No worky.

Cut out the tabs. Use a dremel cutting tool and they come off clean. You won't even notice, from an external view. Well, unless you're a slot poker. :p

[Loremaster]

If I remember correctly, the SNES GG has a full slot, but the side slots are not pinned. If the cart you are using uses those unconnected pins... No worky.

Cut out the tabs. Use a dremel cutting tool and they come off clean. You won't even notice, from an external view. Well, unless you're a slot poker. :p

No, none of those games uses the extra chipset pins. I really would like to figure out the Game Genie's issues anyway, after all it CAN give me radical firepower, right?

[Icarus Moonsight]

It seems completely plausible to me that the GG is not a fix all passthru. What I mean, is maybe there is nothing wrong, other than that cart will not work through the GG. There are straight passthru converters for SFC to SNES w/o cheat device that might work more reliably/universally, since there is not extra hardware/software in between.

Nintendo had problems with Galoob/GGs back then. They could have taken measures in certain games to lock it out and by license forced the lockout implementation. I wouldn't think that there is anything wrong with the GG itself with what you are reporting.

[Loremaster]

I know, but I didn't think they did that to earlier games like F-Zero. I just got that working though, so now I'm wondering.

I noticed that the cartridges that do work seem to be "tighter" when they go into the GG, so I'm wondering if the problem is that the GG has loose connector pins. It's all very strange to me.

BTW, is there a good place to pick up one of these passthrough converters?

[Icarus Moonsight]

Here's the related sticky thread in the Import-Mania sub here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16490

Example:
Super Magic Converter (doesn't work with SuperFX chip games)
I know lik-sang used to sell them. They're (lik-sang) gone now though. I wouldn't know where to get one now. Sorry.