Hucard (PC Genjin2) corrupted graphics problem

[Winniez]

I encountered the following strange problem with PC Genjin 2 hucard. 
The game loads fine, doesn't freeze, music/sound are normal, menus are all as they should be but when I start the game and load the first level graphics are all corrupted. Sound effects and music are still fine and the game doesn't freeze but graphics are all over the place.

Needless to say I have cleaned the contacts multiple times (on the console aswell). I'm using the original white PC-Engine system with a makeshift AV-cable connected to the expansion port. Could that AV-cable be the cause of the problem? Every other Hucard (over 50) in my collection plays fine.
Unfortunally I don't have any other system to try it on.

I bought the game online like 6 months ago, I was very busy at the time so I didn't have time to play it and stupidly tested it just briefly to see that it booted fine.

Any suggestions?

[CrackTiger]

This seems to be the most commonly defective game in the library.

[Winniez]

Thanks for the reply. Aww, really? I tried to google the problem but didn't find anything.
If the hucard really is defective then this serves as a good lesson. Always test the game properly.
Kind of sucks since I was really looking forward to playing it. The only Bonk game I haven't played and many consider it to be the best in the series.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Microwave it!

dont do that.

or maybe do that since it is broken.

film it too so we can see.

[soop]

This seems to be the most commonly defective game in the library.

Agreed.  At least OPs is working, a lot of them are straight up dead.  Years ago I bought a dud for a couple of £, drilled a hole in it and made it into a keyring.  The print rubbed off after a while, but it was neat as a conversation piece.

[Winniez]

Well its working but totally unplayable. The next step would be to try it on another system but I doubt it will help since every other hucard works fine on mine. I suppose there is not much that could be done with a malfunction hucard since the PCB is enclosed.

The keyring is a neat idea, in retrospect some kind of lamination or varnish is propably required  to keep the printing from rubbing off.

[esteban]

Well its working but totally unplayable. The next step would be to try it on another system but I doubt it will help since every other hucard works fine on mine. I suppose there is not much that could be done with a malfunction hucard since the PCB is enclosed.

The keyring is a neat idea, in retrospect some kind of lamination or varnish is propably required  to keep the printing from rubbing off.

Yeah, just to further corroborate what CrackTiger and soop already established: I was surprised, myself, because I had hundreds of TG-16/PCE HuCARDs over the years and for a long time I *never* encountered a Huey that didn't work after basic cleaning/repositioning card in slot.

But, when I got a glitchy PC Genjin 2 and several bad Arcade Cards (both types), suddenly I realized that it was a legitimate problem, though thankfully only a small (I hope!) number of HuCARDs actually fail.

Now, my PC Genjin 2 looks *perfect* and is in excellent condition.

But the crappy, beat up replacement Huey (seriously abused) works fine.

Submerged in water?
Entered a wormhole?
Exposed to Chernobyl?

Who knows?


FINAL: My card is identical to yours, it plays, but with glitched graphics. I tried to play it (since I know the game so well)... and I was able to get pretty far...but a normal human probably wouldn't make it all the way up the waterfall.

IF YOU ARE SILLY LIKE ME, AND WANT TO GET MONEY'S WORTH: It might be fun to try to see if either one of us can beat the first world or two. If you can run emulator as a guide...it would work.

I'm not joking.

Now, when I did this years ago (before YouTube existed), I had TG-16 w/Bonk's Revenge running at same time as PCE w/PCG2 two monitors side-by-side.

At the time, I was taking photos of the two screens with a camera (ha!) and the results were pretty good (considering my no-budget)...

Sadly, I lost a lot of silly things like this when old laptops + harddrives were lost to fire/flooding.

Local backups need to be in a safe place. I was dumb.

[Winniez]

Interesting, very strange that its specifically the PCG 2 that seems to fail most often.
I wonder why, relatively large ROM size, the year of manufacture (in the early 90s Japan there were some dodgy PCBs due to massive demand), being played more than many other games, some design flaw etc. ? Propably some combination of above.

I really hope that this doesn't get more common in the future when Hucards get even older. Scary thought of Hucards beginning to selfdestruct slowly!

I got it for a pretty good price and complete with case and manual so its not a complete waste.

Esteban sounds cool but I'm totally unfamiliar with the game, I have only played it briefly on emulator many moons ago. When I tried I could hardly find the waterfall let alone climb it
After some practice with the normal game I'm sport.

Your contraption sounds interesting, growing up with the NES I used to make lets play videos on VHS, I use the term lets play very loosely. I basically just recorded the footage directly from TV. I only used few tapes and usually taped over but it was kind of neat to have some strange glitch or good performance on tape.

[soop]

That's another thing.  I'm amazed that there aren't more boxes/manuals for sale given the amount of dud cards. I must have spent a good year looking for them for my copy, and I've never found one at a decent price

[Addicted]

@esteban: Are there any other HuCARDs that are known to go bad?  This is the first I've heard of this issue.

[SignOfZeta]

I mainly only remember people mentioning this game and the ACs, maybe only one of the ACs, I can't remember.

I wouldn't worry about it. While HuCARDs look different from other OG cartridges the data is stored the same way. It's a real ROM, not flash or anything. It's one of the most reliable methods of data storage ever made.

Maybe Bonk 2 just seems like it's failing more often because it was a huge seller. Maybe they used an additional supplier who's place wasn't clean that day. The failure of the AC/ACs could be a number of factors since that was kind of a fancy piece and it was quite delayed and doomed and whatever when it finally got released. It could be that 25 year old RAM just isn't reliable or it could just because people keep pressing on that bubble!

[csgx1]

The only game I've come across that seems broken is a Super Star Soldier PC Engine Hucard.  Totally dead and doesn't load anything.  I bought it complete in the case with sponge and everything is like new condition.  The Hucard itself looks brand new too, so I am really surprised it doesn't work.

[SignOfZeta]

Bad ROM chips usually fail because of defective manufacturing processes. The condition of the sponge is not a contributing factor.

[Vecanti]

The condition of the sponge is not a contributing factor.

Unless your using it to try to keep from getting pregnant.

[ParanoiaDragon]

BITD I had an extra copy of Altered Beast for Genny, & I actually tried to mess with the pins & what not to see if  I could get the graphics to be jacked up.  Even gave it the name Altered Yeast!

[deubeul]

So far, among several non working Hucards, I had 3 that I'm sure are not working, as I really tried everything I could:

- a Parasol Star that don't even start.
- a tennokoe that don't even start.
- a Jacky Chan (japanese) with corrupted graphics.

[xcrement5x]

BITD I had an extra copy of Altered Beast for Genny, & I actually tried to mess with the pins & what not to see if  I could get the graphics to be jacked up.  Even gave it the name Altered Yeast!

I actually remember some early Genesis game has debug modes that could be enabled by hot swapping.  Basically you'd boot up altered beast, rip the cart out after the Sega logo and insert the new game and you'd get weird effects. 

[Addicted]

Thanks for the information. I was hoping to grab and Arcade card later this year. I'll have to keep an eye out for one that has been tested working.

[Winniez]

No updates about the Bonk 2 but I'm sad to report that I have encountered my second non-working Hucard. Its Break-In (the Naxat pool game). This one is completey dead, just gives a grey blank screen. On the outside its in immaculate condition (although that doesn't seem to be a big factor). I will be able to return it this time though, or get partial refund since I could keep the nice case and manual.

I would like weigh in a little. From my own experience both first hand and reading from internet it seems that Hucard failures are more common than with regular cartridges. Could it be that (for the time) very fast memory is more prone to fail?  Although Hucards seem to be more reliable in a sense that they rarely need adjusting or reinserting to start the game.

At this point I have had around 100 hucards go through my hands (including the games I have sold) and so far I have encountered 2 malfunctional cards, I know its a small sample but thats still fairly high failure rate given that games are usually sold as tested. I have had propably over 250 Super Famicom/SNES carts (many of which I have bought as untested lots) and not a single game has failed to boot after cleaning. Same goes for all the other carts (except a super corroded Gameboy game that was dead) though my collection is Nintendo heavy.
Could there be a connection between failures and memory speed? SNES carts have very slow memory and Hucard have the fastest available at the time.

[Gredler]

I had a copy on gunhed that for the life of me I could not resurrect, just dead card.

[SignOfZeta]

Winniez: you just got lucky. You got a %2 failure rate, but I'm sure that if it were really that high on average we'd be hearing about it here every single day since this forum collectively owns tens of thousands of HuCARDs and has members that have been here for over a decade and rarely do we hear of a card that cannot be resurrected.

[Winniez]

Yeah, its possible that I have just been lucky with my other games and unlucky with Hucards. Still when it happens to you you start to wonder.

It would be interesting to hear what sort of failure rates others have experienced.

[NecroPhile]

I've got ~150 hueys and have had another couple dozen pass through my hands, and none of 'em are (were) bad.

[CrackTiger]

I've played at least 500 HuCards and the only dud that I remember is a PC Genjin 2 with some glitchy graphics.

[HuMan]

Don't HuCards use glob top ROMs? That kind of IC form factor is notorious for failing early. It's not uncommon at all for them to develop a bad data/address signal, or stop working entirely.

[Winniez]

Don't HuCards use glob top ROMs? That kind of IC form factor is notorious for failing early. It's not uncommon at all for them to develop a bad data/address signal, or stop working entirely.

Seems to be http://www.videogameden.com/articles/hu/hu_ins.jpg
Whats the issue with a glob top design, does the epoxy go bad over time?

[HuMan]

It's just the nature of epoxy covered ICs, they weren't intended for long-term durability. They're not as sealed from the air as proper DIP ICs. Glob tops were commonly used for mass quantities of ROM chips in a short manufacturer lead time.

[Winniez]

Interesting, I didn't know it makes any difference. I believe SNES Star Fox uses those glob top chips aswell, I just cleaned one few weeks ago and was suprised how different it looked from other SNES games. Strangely other Super FX games use normal chips, atleast the ones I have opened.
And most (if not all) of the pirate carts and multicarts that I have opened have glob tops.

Edit:After some googling it seems that Nintendo used glob tops on some Famicom/NES games that had huge print runs. Like you said mass quantities and short lead time to meet the demand.

[nopepper]

My Download huey glitches intermittently, depending on whether I position it right in the hucard slot. There are no garbled graphics or anything like that, but you can't make it past the third(?) level stiff dick boss that comes out of the ocean, you know, the one with all the turrets and what not.

It's not a huge deal, since I can tell right away in the first level, given that the bullet patterns are less aggressive in this "mode", but it's still a bit annoying.

Is this a common occurrence in this or other games?

[Winniez]

That sounds more like a contact problem (or a problem with data paths) than a bad ROM.
 I have experienced something similar with few cartridges, good cleaning sorted it.

[nopepper]

You are probably right, but I have applied all my known "good" cleaning methods and it still happens. And I know is that it's the card itself, because the same issue happens whether I'm playing it in a Duo-R or a Coregrafx.

So this begs the question, besides alcohol and cotton swab, what else should be used to clean HuCards?

[Winniez]

I don't know, I haven't used anything else besides alcohol/contact cleaner on Hucards.
With cartridges I sometimes use fine sandpaper as an extreme measure if there are signs of corrosion.

[spenoza]

I wonder if there's some damage affecting reliable contact under a blob somewhere.