Mutation Nation AES - cut pins causing soft reboots?

RoboArmy

n00b
Joined
Mar 10, 2018
Posts
13
Hi there -

I recently acquired a copy of Mutation Nation for the AES. The problems I'm having are that the game reboots back to the white "Neo Geo" bootup screen. This happens:

1) On the intro when the "20XX" text zooms out OR

2) On the intro when the weird head zooms out (it's always one or the other over and over, but either way never getting to the title screen)

3) If I skip the intro and play in the two player mode up until the green guys spawn in the first level.

In 1P mode I haven't been seen it reboot for as far as I can get in the game (which has so far been Area 6). I can use either charcaters in 1P mode, no problems. The only graphical glitches I see are garbage white pixels during area transitions on the black parts of the screen.

I have a Japanese AES, stock BIOS (it's my only system).

I've opened the cart up, and it looks like someone ran a knife or something along the pins, you can see some pics here: https://imgur.com/a/LK1PP

I'm not an expert in electronics by any means, but I used my multimeter in continuity testing mode, and it seems like all the pins have continuity across the cuts. I even went and tried testing the traces, and it seems like everything I could trace had continuity. It doesn't look like there's any cold or cracked solder joints on the board.

Anyone ever see something like this before? I did some extensive searching, and didn't see anything about cut pins anywhere (though I certainly could have missed something). Is this cart a factory reject or something? Any recommendations on repairing/diagnosing this?

The pins in the cart slot of the AES itself seem OK, maybe a few are a little bent, but I haven't had any problems with any of the other games I've tried.
 
Last edited:

RoboArmy

n00b
Joined
Mar 10, 2018
Posts
13
Tried reflowing the solder, cleaning the pins again, rechecking continuity, checking the capacitors/resistors, no dice.

I was able to play through all the levels and beat the last boss, it would reset on the last boss depending on how it was inserted, but I was able to eventually beat him.

Looks like no one has any ideas, and I am able to (usually) play through the game, so I guess I'll just leave this one as is for now.
 
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