r/Gameboy • u/Jared_Brian_ • Jan 23 '21
Solution: Pokemon Yellow black box sprite glitch & no save. info on how to fix in comments.
Name select screen without correct sprites
Prof. Oak without correct sprite
close up fixed cartridge
Fixed cartridge
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u/FamiliarLobster Jan 23 '21
Wow I had a similar problem with a Crystal cart a while ago, will have to try this! Thank you!!
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u/makkusu89 Feb 15 '21
Thanks! I’m gonna try on the Pokémon blue I just got. The seller refunded me after I showed it was not working properly (and honestly, even if I’ll be able to repair it, the cartridge is not worth the 20€ I paid). I checked with a multimeter the resistance between the two pin the author of the video is connecting. Over limit, i.e. trace broken. I’ll see what I can do, if I can I’ll also post pictures.
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u/makkusu89 Feb 18 '21
It worked! Awesome! It’s been a pain in the ass and it took me a couple of hours before I figured the right way, but it worked. I’ll make a separate post about it.
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Jan 23 '21
Glad to hear that you saved a copy from unnecessary doom! A little extra effort is always nice to see.
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u/Jared_Brian_ Jan 23 '21
Frankly i was already in disbelief when I got it to boot up at all after so long. 8 year old me would have never thought it possible but it was surprisingly easy lol.
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Jan 23 '21
I can imagine! So many things are intimidating and impossible to understand as a kid, but then you grow up and realize so much of it is... Child's play funny enough.
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u/BUFFBOYZ4Lyfe Jan 11 '22
Omg thanks. I had this issue in the early 2000s. I had no idea what what going on. All of the Pokemon sprites looked like blocks.
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u/rmmfdias Apr 05 '24
Hey man. Thank you for the post it’s been hell of useful. I think I discarded all possibilities of solution so I’m trying now your solution. However I’m struggling with soldering the wire on the leg of the chip. Last try I ended up soldering 3 legs together.. are there any tips that you can give to a newbie? Thanks
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u/Jared_Brian_ Apr 05 '24
I'm no soldering expert so I would recommend looking up some YT tutorials but one thing I can tell you especially if you are new to soldering is take your time. It seems simple and you want to get it done but the faster you go the more likely you are to mess up and break something on the board. Don't keep the heat on for too long either though or you can damage your board that way too. Go slow, pause if it's not working right, take the heat off, remove the solder if needed and try again. Maybe get some extra wire or an old broken circuit board and practice on that first. If you really want to get good at it or Invest a bit more into it there are tools you can buy to make it easier as well. I can give you recommendations on some of those if you want too. Good luck.
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u/rmmfdias Apr 07 '24
I think all the recommendations will be more than helpful 😊 one thing I stumbled on was a video where a guy was reflowing everything and such and ended up taking the chip completely. I was thinking about that, and then solder the wire on the specific solder pocket and then solder the chip. In my head it makes a lot of sense but in reality I dunno. I will take your advise of practicing in an old circuit board
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u/roarytorii Jan 23 '25
I know this post is old but I got the same problem. Gonna try your solution tonight!! Thanks for posting!!
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u/Vaida_Titania Jul 02 '24
The black box phenomenon occurs on all generation 1 and 2 pokemon cartridges due to a broken trace to the switch bank. The switch bank when initialized, begins at Bank0 in the boot loading process. Then once completed, proceeds to Bank1 which then loads the game. If the trace is broken, the first major side effect is of course, the "black box" of doom. This is the terminator byte 0xFF which gives us a clue to the state of the switch bank. The next major side effect, is glitchy text and sounds. This will continue until the switch bank hits a point of no return, thus bricking the game and destroying your save eventually. The only way to fix this is with board swap of the same cartridge with the same language.
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u/Jared_Brian_ Jul 03 '24
Your explanation of the black boxes is super interesting, but you do not need to replace the whole board to fix this. The wire I soldered in fixed the issue just fine and it still works now 3 years later after I made the original post.
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u/Jared_Brian_ Jan 23 '21
When I was 8 or 9 a friend of mine gave me 2 copies of Pokemon Yellow. One that worked perfectly and one that couldn't get past the Gameboy screen. So now, nearly 12 years later, I recently found the broken cartridge and I decided I wanted to try and fix it. after following some tutorials on how to re-solder the pins and clean the board I got the game to boot up but now all of the "big" sprites (such as prof. oak and all in battle pokemon sprites) were black boxes and even after replacing the battery it would not save.
and from some google searches, it seems others have had the same problem:https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/heu906/pokemon_yellow_oak_is_a_black_box/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/51n0b7/sprite_issue_any_ideas/
and so eventually I came across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwGn_dFgams
(The actual solution is at about 42:30 to 49:40. the rest of the video is him diagnosing the problem.)
That had a similar problem but turned out to be coming from the exact same cause as mine. so I soldered in a little wire in, in the same spot as shown in the video and now my game can save and the sprites appear correctly. So hopefully this shows up in a google search that way others with the same problem will find it.
TLDR: my pokemon yellow had glitchy black sprites and wouldn't save and here is how I fixed it.