Budokan (Sega Genesis) Cartridge Repair 

Learned so much about repair from watching you fix a non broken cartridge. Lol Great video!

I think is a very good video, it goes through most of the usual problems with the cartridges. Personally I've been trying to repair a few games that are not working on the collection of a few friends, so far the diode test has done wonders in a few of them, but all of them didn't show anything on the screen, not even the first "sega" screen, so for the games that show nothing most of the time is a diode not working properly. On the other hand, the games that show the first screen but then don't boot have been a pain in the ass, I've checked almost everything except for the caps since I don't have a multimeter that can messure capacitance, but I guess I could take out a cap from a working one and switch it just to test it before buying a bunch of caps.

I'm surprised it didn't at least give some kind of warning about being wrong region. I recall one Christmas my family gifted me a copy of Dragon's Fury (US Version) to play on my imported Japanese Megadrive. It came up with a wrong region warning and refused to play, I sobbed my eyes out! And BTW I purchased Budokan when it was new, I think it was 1990 or 1991.

Holy baskets. Thank you so much for this video. I’ve been pecking at a copy of Zany Goof for a good while trying to figure out why it won’t boot and now I’m sure this is exactly the problem.

Electrolytic capacitors usually have a tollerance of 10-20% when it comes to capacitance; so Your original cap was most likely OK too. Also, you can use Your ESR meter on non polarized capacitors as well. You wont even have to check which probe lead goes where :D ESR and capacitance aren't the only things that should be measured with a capacitor. Both of them looking OK does not mean the capacitor is ok. Leakage is just as important. If a capacitor takes quite a while to charge up, that means parts of the "electricity" put in is coming out at the other end right away, instead of being stored. Too much and You got excessive leakage which means Your capacitor acts more like a resistor, pretty much, or worse, a short. Another thing ^^; *lol* Both main chips are connected together, so if one would be fine and the other would be damaged, You'd only see the values of the chip that's ok. You'd have to remove one and check the other one, then swap them to get useable results. Anyways, I like Your channel ^-^ Keep on rolling!

Thank you very much for this vidéo, i'm exactly in this case, my game run on my MD1(French) but not on my MD2. I understand the reason now!

Fascinating video! Funnily enough theirs a small number of Accolade cartridges that have the same issue, the most notorious being Onslaught which is quite rare these days but occassionally shows up as faulty when really its just designed to only work on the earliest model megadrives. Also would it be possible for you to photograph the pages of your action replay manual, the codes are poorly documented and my own manual is in very poor condition so it'd be nice to have a pdf backup :D

Did namco ever do something like this? I have a burning force cart that wont work for presumably similar reasons.

Good one. I never even knew about that security lock out thing. I guess its the kind of thing youd only know about on investigation of these carts. Will need to look into this for a Hard Drivin cart i have for Genesis. It doesnt work on either ntsc or pal megadrive but looks schmick inside. But diff between u and me. I wont spend more than a fiver to get it working haha. Hehe 'spudgers'

what soldering ion station is that? lol return many times for not working...

At the end of the video your console is powered on with the Action Replay attached. That means you ripped your Budokan cartridge without powering off?

There may be exceptions but from what I remember EA NTSC and 'PAL' carts are the same.

When you show the label close up at 8:28 it says "For use with the Sega Genesis System" under where the label is damaged, which suggests its a US cart, because thats the only place it was called Genesis, a PAL cart would have called it the Mega Drive

There is a trick to bypassing without game genie quite simple really. Follow these steps and it will work which is odd. It is the technique I found that gets you bypassed. Ok here it goes put the game in the console turn the console on yup black blank screen no problem leave the console on dont turn it off remove the cartridge from the console while it is on. Do not turn off the console! Reinsert the cartridge into the console while the console is on. Ok once the game is in place hit reset button on the console now the game boots and is ready to play! You are welcome and yes it is a weird way to get a game loaded but it works.

I had this game as a kid don't fix it