I Built the ULTIMATE Pokemon Game 

Thanks Sean! You have a great video on this too. Hope you’re well?

@@TheRetroFuture Yep! Just had a baby, life is a lot different now :)

​@@esotericseancongratulations!

@@esotericsean congrats! :)

@esotericsean Congratulations on the little one man!

you should go out sometimes little bro :D

Why is switching something from Japanese to English a Chad move...?

Auctioning off the old American cart. He should of put the japanese rom in there and let the shenanigans begin of someone thinking they got some rare Japanese copy of the game hah.

@@erik3371 It's putting the cart for auction for charity is the chad move.

that isnt what chad means you utter zoomer

Didn't know it was possible Sounds cool

I'm gearing up to do exactly this, actually. I have a Japanese silver cartridge and the necessary ROM chip adapter board, I'm just waiting for the required flash chip to arrive. Once its all assembled with a fresh battery I'm going to flash my current Pokemon Patched-Crystal game to it and move the save over.

​@@S31Syntaxhey do u have a video link for this procedure

yeah I'm confused why he didnt do this aside from original-ness i guess. this and the battery socket mod are some fairly intermediate tier mods that he already did half the work for. maybe a future video

I can confirm. Had a phase a few years ago and bought all the JP Pokemon Crystal carts under $25 bucks i could find. Installed flashable chips on them and put US Crystal, Crystal Clear, and Pokemon Prism on em.

Think the japenese crystal you could actually catch celbi in the illex forest with the gs ball

@@mr.dr.profstonerman I know right, a little bit attention to detail goes a long way.

Japan version of Crystal had extra features that were not in the other countries' versions, and those features made use of even more save data space, so it has a 1MB chip. That being the only GBC game to have this chip (that I know of), they decided to give it a custom board design.

everything in japan is so much cooler and detailed than USA... i hate/love it

What about them compared to modern games?

@@fran2911 they are 10000000x better in EVERY way. Do you think any 2022 games will be talked about or remembered like 80s to 2010? Lol think again! Back then our childhoods were glorious adventures of freedom and new technical innovations that enhanced our daily lives. Not boring shovelware that is nothing original and designed to manipulate kids into microtrans and lootcrates. Games are so dead now they litrly are remaking all the games from our youth in HD now! Usually worse than the originals! And we socialised too we played together as a unit and created wonderful memories we didnt sit miserable alone chasing the next lootcrate dopamine hit because the games are intentionally unsatisfying in order to manipulate your psychology and make you hand over maximum profit.

@@benayers8622 I’m not that young, I agree most games are shit now, I just don’t see what he’s comparing old cartridges to.. Lol

​@@benayers8622i mean I can see people talking about Zelda Tears of The Kingdom in 80 years same with Honkai Star Rail, but for different reasons.

@@benayers8622true Damn I miss the early 00s

Where's the fun in that?

​@@samlippert7122can watch anime without subs

@@samlippert7122 you get more kudos and can play more games

😂😂😂

That also would take a very long time, possible years

That's definitely a factor, and to keep this from being an issue, I would just pop a silicon mat on top of it, this would insulate the boards being worked on and prevent the metal base from sucking away heat. But the biggest problem is the tip selection! It's a conical, I don't know why people still use these things. Every soldering station I've ever bought comes with one, and they suck. I throw those tips out and use something else with more surface area. I've been repairing electronics for the last 9 years, and the most important element when it comes to soldering is thermal linkage. This is the amount of tip surface area that is in contact with the work. A conical ends at a fine point, and you might think that makes it perfect for soldering small things. It doesn't. The end is round, and there is very minimal surface area contact with what you actually want to solder. Even if you tin the tip to maximize the thermal linkage, it's still nowhere near as effective as it could be with a more beneficially shaped tip. The size of the tip is important, you don't want to use a tip that's far too large for the pads you're dealing with. But the shape of the tip is equally important. Beveled tips, in my experience, provide a much better soldering experience for SMD components. SOIC, QFP, QFN, etc are all much easier to deal with when using bevels, or even curved tips, than using conicals. Why? Because there is much higher thermal linkage. Bevels don't terminate on a round end, they have one big flat face, which means better transfer of heat. For the hot air removal of SOICs, I use curved tweezers and get under the legs, and gently grab hold of them. Once the whole thing is floating, it's very easy to pull up. The trick is to constantly move the air across the pins. The method with bridging one side of the SOIC is completely valid, and it can be made even better using a non-eutectic solder like chipquik (low melt) or a 60/40 blend of leaded. Additionally, if this were an SOIC that still functioned, it wouldn't have been salvageable because when the package was lifted after one side was free, all of the legs that were still soldered were bent and damaged. It was broken anyway so it doesn't matter, but if you wanted to apply the same technique to save a component, I wouldn't advise doing it like that. Not at all saying this is a bad video, I quite enjoyed it! Just wanted to point out some criticisms I had with the tools being used. The stuff shown is technically correct, but if I were doing it, I would have tackled a few of the problems a bit differently.

@@spartan456 As you seem quite knowledgeable in the field, can I ask a quick question? - I need to hot air solder a resistor to a Nintendo Switch. I've been practising on a donor board for several days before I move to the actual working board and have found that the switch PCB seems to soak up a lot of heat, I'm wondering whether it's anything to do with how many layers the board has. The temp I've been successful with is 420C and 40% airflow, which takes approximately a minute to a 90 seconds to get the solder paste to solidify. Is this kind of heat and time ok on a switch board? I'm fine with soldering by hand, but hot air is a new one to me and the resistors are so tiny that all my tips are far too large, which is why I've turned to hot air. I've installed about 5 up to now, but any temp less than 420C and it seems to take forever.

@SCorpG22 Hot air rework has a lot of nuances to it. You're correct that board layers play a massive role in heat dissipation. Hot air rework is not just about the air temp, it's also about the size of the nozzle, the velocity of the air, and how far away your nozzle is from the work. I've done soldering on lots of things with hot air, including even delicate plastic FFC connectors and terminals. In my own experience you are far more likely to damage delicate components (plastic, sensitive transistors, etc) long before you harm the board substrate permanently. As long as you're careful, that is. My advice would be to do a bit of pre-heat. Before I touch anything with hot air, I point it at the general work area, and let it bathe the area in hot air. This slowly brings the temp up. Over the course of about 30 seconds to a minute, I gradually bring the nozzle closer and start bumping down the airflow. Until eventually the nozzle is right on top of the component and I'm wiggling it around in circles. Depending on the component, I may need to keep the airflow the same or even bring it up higher. You can use flux as a visual indicator for where your air is going and how hard it is hitting. This time frame sounds about the same as what you might be working with too. The difference between my approach and yours is the amount of time I have the board exposed to the highest amount of heat. That's ultimately what you want to figure out, and this is a nuanced thing that just comes from experience. It varies from thermal mass and workload, and your particular hot air station. Some components I do need a solid minute of air, even after the preheat step. HDMI ports on Playstations need TONS of heat, but their boards are purpose built to dissipate as much heat as possible. So on something like that, it's designed to take that beating. Another thing to consider is station calibration. Your station may be set to 420C, but the actual temperature could be lower, or it even could be higher. Many stations are equipped with a calibration feature in which you check the actual temperature with an external thermocouple, and then tell the station what the actual temperature is. From there it will correct itself and show you the actual temperature. Edit It also helps to have a suitable air station. Don't use anything with a blower in the handpiece (the $70 stations from amazon). The more pricey professional stations are worth the cost because they move MUCH higher volumes of air, and provide a FAR less turbulent air stream. I own one of those cheap stations, and a Quick 861DW. There is a significant difference between the two. The cheap station at the highest airflow is the same as the Quick on 20%.

@@spartan456 The resistor I'm attempting to install is a 0201 size and by god it's tiny. It's taken a lot of trial and error to land on the sweetspot of not too much volume of air (which has been evaporating the flux too quickly) and the right distance of the nozzle. Like I say, I've managed to install 5 successfully, but my air station isn't the best however it's only the 1 job I'm doing as a favour to someone so buying an industrial sized station just isn't feasible for the time being. I do get what you're saying though about the benefits of one though. I'll take your advice and try and pre-heat before I do it. Tell me, how long is too long to expose a multi-layer board too? And how much heat can resistors take? I did test one of the ones I installed and the ohms reading was correct, so I didn't kill it. I'm just wondering if the heat I'm exposing the board to is likely to kill anything else? - Probably not, but it's always best to seek advice. Thanks a lot by the way!

@SCorpG22 The thing you really want to watch out for is dumping too much heat into the board too quickly. For example, a room temperature board? You wouldn't want to get your nozzle right up to the component and start blasting it. This will actually cause significant damage to the board itself, as the layers experience thermal shock and expand/contract. If you were to try something like this, you'd see the board layers begin to delaminate and bubble. Since you've managed to do a few already, it sounds like you got a good hang of it. Unfortunately I can't really answer the question about how long is too long. The answer is "2-3 seconds after the solder melts is when you want to stop". How long it takes to reach that point varies entirely from board to board and component to component. In electronics assembly, it is much more precise. But when they toss a board into a reflow oven, they're programming the oven with a specific set of instructions that tell it how long to heat and when to raise the temperature or drop it, etc. It's all very precise, yet still takes an order of minutes. It sounds like you're very careful, so you shouldn't have to worry about damaging boards. In terms of passive components like resistors, it's very unlikely you will damage those with heat. If it were something more delicate like a component with plastic, that would be different.

You can also use your hot air station to preheat the PCB. Heat the bottom of the PCB with the temp set to about 150c and the airflow higher than what you would normally use, flip the board over, reset your temp and airflow, and work the component off.

Flash the chip yourself? Spare a international crystal copy, safe a japanese one.

@@ClosestNearUtopia I looked into this and I'm not sure it's possible with official carts. At least, the info I saw seemed to indicate no.

I somehow need to replace the battery on my crystal and gold and silver games. I just don’t trust myself enough to do it without breaking the carts

@@scottsthoughts2227 Dude I did it on Yellow, gold/silver, and emerald…they all worked but idk what happened to Gold maybe the battery leaked or I fucked something up but the board is now fucked

@@johnsmiths256 Thats rough man

Definitely nice! Yes i agree, but once you mastered it its fairly easy

It was one of the worst botche up solderings I ever have seen. I'm struggling to understand what he did great here? He almost ripped off the solderjoints by lifting up a partially attached chip. Just wow

It was honestly terrible. This was very easy to do with just hot air and Flux, he just lacks the patience

Dragging the wick is fine, the important thing about solder wick is not applying pressure with the iron, simply resting it on. Heating a single spot for longer is more likely to lift pads or damage traces than dragging the wick and distributing the heat.

​@@Ravio_Lee My instructors in college would disagree re: dragging, but different techniques are out there for sure - it was always pitched to me as a bad habit and would have failed me in college tho :^) Heating a single spot (not excessively, appropriate dwell times & temp) should not itself cause damage unless we're talking about an already damaged PCB (corroded from a blown cap, etc. etc.) for basic desolder wickening anyways (there are always edge cases I acknowledge, so I'm speaking generally)

I find that raising the temperature to melt lead free solder is more likely to burn pads than leaded temperatures.

@@nyanpasu64 True! Adding a bit of fresh leaded solder to dilute the lead free can lower the temp and make desoldering easier and at safer temps

@@ProgVirus I learned that pretty quick when I ran into lead free solder. It always melts way better once you add some fresh lead solder to it.

EXACTLY I was waiting for the moment he'd use the Intel chip

I don't even know what that would do for a Pokemon game, but I don't care, I want more Gigaflops in my Pokemanz.

was really hoping this would be part of it as well!