Strange Cartridge Behavior for SNES and N64 Game

[wingzrow]

Starfox 64

The game plays and looks fine, but the title screen music and all in game background music is too quiet! I've compared it to the two other starfox carts I have and it's not me or my tv.

After cleaning the contacts the problem is still there.

Super Mario All Stars (snes)

The game refuses to start even after cleaning the contacts. The odd thing about this is that after using my retrode with it, the rom and save are still there and all intact. I've tested it on both my SNES model 2 and the original model and both refuse to play it.

any ideas guys?

[APE992]

There were multiple revisions of Star Fox 64 released - perhaps one of them had the music volume quieted by default? I think the options menu can allow you to change the volume level.

As for your Super Mario All Stars cart, you aren't the first one here to have the same problem. It is probably a broken trace or broken solder joint somewhere that may be imperceptible with the human eye. I've been working on a few carts I own myself that have the same symptoms (Pokemon Sapphire for the GBA is my top priority. I can't even get the save file to dump sadly) but the newer carts have more and smaller components making them more difficult to test. SNES carts, thankfully, seem to have double sided PCBs rather than multi-layered making testing much easier.

If you can dump the save from the cart you're probably in good shape. Means the majority of the cart must be intact. Unfortunately all it takes is one damaged trace from the mask ROM to render the cart non-bootable. I can take a look at it if you like. Either way you should make a backup of that save before it is gone.

[wingzrow]

I'll be sure not to throw it away, that's for sure. Whenever I send you something again i'll be sure to throw that cart your way. I had no idea there was a sound option on starfox 64 so i'll have to look at the options menu.