devynal

Everyone remember the five year rule? Your NES carts have a battery in them to save game information and when five years rolls around it up and dies.

But I just threw in Dragon Warrior for NES a few days ago and low and behold it still had my original character on there. We're talking when Nintendo was giving these carts away with Nintendo Power subscriptions. When was that, 13-15 years ago? I just thought that was pretty amazing. However, my Zelda II Adventure of Link was not so lucky.

PixyJunket

No, I don't remember a five year rule.

All my NES, SNES and Genesis carts still have working batteries.

jeffdsmith

All my carts are good, my N64 Mad Catz memory card was not so good to me...

Joe Molotov

It varies. Sometimes they'll last 15+ years, and sometimes they'll be dead in a year or two. I actually replaced the battery in my Shining in the Darkness cart for the Genesis. It's not hard to do, the only tricky part is getting the cartridge open.

tanman

Sometimes there is some soldering. My Link's Awakening for the GB went bad and I wanted to replace it. Opened it up and everything then just decided to upgrade to Link's Awakening DX. So far I haven't since I haven't found it for a decent price with instructions and all. (pixy can relate )

Joe Molotov

I just cut the solder with a pocket knife and taped the new battery in. It may lack finesse, but it worked.

Jeremy517

You can get the 4.5 MM security screwdriver bit for Genesis games (or 3.8 for NES/SNES games) off eBay for pretty cheap. http://www.mcmelectronics.com also used to sell them, but I'm not sure if they still do. The bits also make thoroughly cleaning the contacts on games incredibly easy.

PixyJunket

Yup, check eBay for the bits.. I have a pair and they've been MOST useful during my flea marker binges.

Instead of tape Joe, you should have attached the new battery with a small bit of solder.