So, about a week ago, my friend grabbed his copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for the GBA from his house and brought it to campus to play. He unfortunately left his DS at home, so he has no way to play it, but he let me hold onto it for a bit as I have a GBA and a GBA SP.
Problem is, the game doesn't work...and I don't know how to fix it.
When I pop the game into either system, it shows the "Game Boy Nintendo" screen and does the ding. Then the screen fades to white and...nothing.
Like I said, I tried swapping systems and even cleaning it out.
I've tried using a baby wipe, dry Q-tips, damp Q-tips, and blowing. The only results I'd gotten were one time, the "Nintendo" part didn't show up. Another time, the "o" on the Nintendo glitched out. And lastly, there was a time when the game got stuck on the "Game Boy Nintendo" screen without fading out.
It's doing the fade again, but...still nothing. From what I've seen online, the first thing I'm supposed to see is the Konami logo.
You could open it up and see if anything went wrong inside. Things that can happen there are battery leaks (some GBA still games use batteries) and unsoldered chips.
You can also take the opportunity to clean it more effectively.
Luckily, GBA games are easy to open and close, unlike GB/C games...
For GBA games, you still need a special screwdriver (a Y-shaped head aka a "Triwing". I once bought a "GBA Pokemon battery repair kit" and the seller included the wrong screwdriver (a + shape) with it).
You can also melt the non ink part of a cheap pen and stick it in the screw hole for a few minutes. I had to use this method to replace my Silver battery ages ago.
It kinda looks like the battery leaked (though its a bit hard to see from my phone). Try to carefully clean the affected parts and see if the circuits are OK. Using a pencil's eraser is an easy way to clean it, just remove the fluff afterwards.
Just in case, you can also try to see if all the chips are properly soldered in.
Hopefully, just cleaning it will do the job. If the battery fluids circuited or corroed it, then there's not much to do sadly.
Edit: oh darn that looks RUSTED wow. That corner there doesn't look good at all, I'm afraid it's either totally corroed or burnt.
You could try and see if it works now (it looks much nicer now that you cleaned it). But from the previous pic, it kinda looks like the game is a bit... Burnt (does it smell funny?)
You can test the game without screwing it, just to check.
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Topic: Game Boy Advance Game Help (Cleaning/Repairs)
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