I found a GameBoy cartridge PCB in the middle of the road a long time ago, circa 2010. I used to collect random circuit boards when I was younger just because I thought they looked neat and this managed to survive somehow. This one is missing it's shell, and has definitely seen some violence. I'm going to see if I can see if I can get it to working condition again to see what game it is.
The board itself has the code 'DMG-BEAN-02', 1 Toshiba chip (which i think is the game rom) and another Nintendo one which I couldn't read. I wasn't able to find anything particularly conclusive about this cartridge board revision or the toshiba chip other than the fact that the ROM is 256kb but the board is dated 1989 which is very early in the GameBoy's life.
I can only assume that this got ran over by a car or was executed Irate Gamer style for a youtube video. This only made me more interested in what game it is and if it was a particularly terrible one that deserved it. Having this functional again would be cool, and it looks like the main chips are in ok condition so I'm hopeful.
There's 2 capacitors at the top of the cartridge with little holes to accomodate them. I thought these were resistors for the longest time because of their shape and the multi-coloured lines but apparently capacitors used to have them too. Both of them look pretty toast but one of them is actually cracked and split open, presumably due to the force of impact. The PCB itself is also cracked, bent and heavily scratched, but looks to be in fair order. The chips are ok and that's what matters. Even if it wasn't, I've seen people make replacement boards for GameBoy cartridges.
I started by removing the disguised capacitors (both showed no continuity) and checking traces on the board using a multimeter. I don't think they're super necessary but i didn't really want to risk not having them. I'm useless at reading resistor values so cap vals like this are beyond me. I heard someone online say that they're both 10nF so I just replaced them with a ceramic of that value and hoped for the best. You'll have to forgive my godawful job because i only just realised that my iron defaults to the highest heat setting and was overheating everything. I just want to test it though.
I was extra careful on the parts of the PCB that looked cracked, but it does look like continuity held up. You can repair traces that have been cracked by removing some of the mask and reflowing, or just by soldering a jumper wire to where the trace leads. Older electronics can be surprisingly resilient, and they're alot easier to work on. Now that everything's a tiny surface mount thingy you can't really repair much. That's technology for you though.
I used a copy of 'Centipede' as the shell so I could test this. This cartridge actually came with a complete original GameBoy I bought years and years ago for basically nothing. It's been sitting in a drawer for a while because the LCD is toast. The GameBoy seems to power on alright besides but screen replacements are really scarce and I don't really need an original Gameboy atm. I promise I'll get round to it eventually, I kinda like the OG black GameBoy compared to the classic grey one. Very slick.
Unfortunately because I couldn't find any super small capacitors this won't really fit together into the cartridge, but you can get it into most GameBoys with just the back cover. I don't really know where you'd find ones that small that aren't surface mount. I decided (mainly because of my awful soldering job) to have another go at the capacitors and place them inbetween the 2 chips so a case could fit. You can get replacement shells on ebay in a whole bunch of different colours so maybe I'll get a clear case sometime in the future.
And the game that was almost annihilated was, Drum roll please...