I Bought a RARE Pokémon N64 That's Broken - Let's Fix It!

I bought this broken special edition Pikachu N64 because I hate to see him in this condition and I want to get it working again it also came with this game Rugrats in Paris the movie let's plug it in and see if it'll work this video is sponsored by iFixit more on them in a minute okay turning it on oh we got nothing okay I think we need to take it apart and see what's going on also after looking at the controller we need to replace this joystick and then also I'm gonna need to clean the pins on this game some of them you can't really see it from here but they're really dirty so we'll open this game up and get that cleaned as well but first let's start with the console itself now I've never opened up an N64 before and anytime I get something that I've never opened before I always pull out my iFixit Protech toolkit the reason for that is it's got a large bit set so this will open up almost anything you might need and then over here you got pry tools and tweezers for helping you get into different Electronics so I'm going to pull out the bid in driver set it's just in there with a magnet so you can just remove it just like that and then the nice thing is that the cover is segmented so you can put your screws inside the little squares to keep them organized and looking at the bottom it looks like we've got game bit Fasteners that's one of the reasons I like using this set because it has two game bit Fasteners a lot of bit sets don't include those Pikachu edition n64s can sell for up to 500 on eBay I saw one sell in May 2023 for 550 recently the prices have come down to more like in the three and four hundred dollar ranges but if you have one of these sitting around it might be worth quite a bit it might be worth checking out Ebay you know to sell them to people like me these things are in here tight I think this is probably the first time this thing's been taken apart really not a fan of game bit fasteners they can slip really easily on your on your driver okay how does this come off it doesn't want to come off yet oh do we have a warranty sticker maybe a warranty sticker right there no it's coming up slowly except for the front I feel like we must have a screw in the front somewhere oh maybe maybe we need to take this guy out okay there we go ah that helps now we should be able to just pull this off we've got one connector in here that's handy just a little connector to pull apart right here easy enough the inside's a little dirty not too bad though that's cool this is translucent green it's interesting I don't know why that is whoa this thing is dirty inside I think what I'm going to do is start by cleaning the pins of the jumper pack and then where it plugs into the board and then same with the game context down in the game slot here I know this is also super dirty inside I'm actually not going to clean this today what we will be doing is putting a full deep clean video of this console up on the restores channel I'll link that at the very end of this video so you can check that out if you want but let's start getting these cleaned and see if that's going to fix our issues I'm just going to use some isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush down in there just visually the pins look pretty good so I'm not sure if this is the problem or not but it's always good just to give it a good cleaning probably where it's dirtier is on the jumper pack itself and on the game itself okay now let's do the jumper pack and the game card itself the jumper pack doesn't look too dirty honestly it looks pretty good but I know this is a common problem with these n64s so it's not gonna hurt to give it a good cleaning yeah those contacts were pretty dirty actually okay there's that one let's take the game apart while we're at it and check these contacts out and we'll be getting into our iFixit kit again to get the smaller game bit that's what these game cards use it also has some adhesive on the back of it is that problem real quick I'm just going to use some IPA go around and let it soak in the adhesive then we should be able to just rub it off here in a minute you know what as I'm doing this I think I'm actually gonna leave this for Robert over on the restores channel I'll let him do that cleaning that'll be more satisfying anyway although I did get a lot of it off but we'll save the rest for him the front of this is pretty nasty and so is the top so there will still be some good cleaning there okay I've never taken one of these apart before either so should be interesting and then does this just come off yep okay there we go yeah those are those contacts are pretty gross looking let's get this cleaned off I think this is gonna call for a little deoxite yeah look at my Q-tip there it's just turning black or you know maybe that's more like light black where's that gray okay now let's get some deoxid and clean it up really good if I can remember where I put it and I have no clue where my deoxite went so I'm actually just going to use some magic eraser and some IPA there are multiple ways to clean these things up and everybody's got a different opinion on the best way to do it but I've found there are multiple ways that work just fine obviously you want to avoid using anything abrasive as much as you as long as you can that's kind of that's kind of the last thing you want to do but I have used a tiny bit of very fine grit sandpaper and that did work really well to clean them some people are cringing right now at the thought of that but that's what happened and it worked good obviously that's the last resort if you want these things to have as little a little as little abrasives on them as possible okay they got some good Gunk off of it all right I think that's looking pretty good let's get this installed back into cartridge case does it go upside down I feel like it doesn't I feel like it goes like this yeah that looks great then this and then the top piece ah I forgot screws and one forgotten screw and the second forgotten screw now we can put this back together okay so with the jumper pack cleaned the game cartridge cleaned and the slots on the motherboard cleaned I think it's time to put these back in and see if just that cleaning will get it working again okay and I have this back together just enough to test got the jumper pack installed and the game cartridge in well let's turn it on and see what happens oh there we go look at that yeah so that was actually a pretty easy fix but we do still need to fix this controller we'll do that next I just want to double check just make sure this is going to keep working and there we go okay so this is clearly working let's get this controller fixed up we gotta fix this thumbstick so the controller will work so let's get that taken apart and see what's going on in there okay and back to our iFixit tool kit we're going to try a ph0 first is that good that looks to be about right one of the great things about these iFixit tool sets is that these bits are warranted for life so if you break one you just contact them and say hey I broke my bit and they'll send you out another one before I was sponsored by them I did that because I found I fix the tools to be really good and then I was using the bits like every day for taking apart PS4s back when I was running a repair business which I don't do anymore I just do videos but I was running repair business and using iFixit bits and one of them eventually wore out and I just contacted them and they just sent me right out another one that's why a lot of times in in my videos I'll say that they're good tools but also good people the people that I that I dealt with were just really nice about it or no issues at all never taken one of these controllers apart either so sometimes controllers can be a little intimidating when you first take them apart sometimes there's a bunch of little parts inside so we'll see what we get here okay not bad yeah this piece just came right out I feel like this is not a genuine Nintendo controller just based on the look of the inside so hopefully the parts I have to replace that joystick will work fine also I mean I'm not an expert on these maybe this is a genuine Nintendo controller I I don't know but controllers back when they made these were a little crazy they were a lot different than controllers today so who knows okay and this should be the part we need to get to here we go so we need to remove all these screws on the back side right here okay there's that part and then this part there we go uh yeah so this is what the aftermarket ones look like this is what the brand new ones look like or the ones that go in a actual Nintendo controller this one actually would fit in there but then we have this connector that doesn't go to anything I mean this connector wouldn't plug into anything down here so I'm gonna put this back together but this controller actually did come with this lot as well when I bought it so let's take this apart and look at this joystick and see if that is close to the original Nintendo joystick if it is then we'll rebuild this one instead all right and with all those screws loose let's see if this one is anywhere close to what the original looks like or what the original might look like and it looks pretty similar to the other one kind of a cheapo replacement but this part might be something similar let's check it out so the analog stick piece looks similar and I just need it to be similar enough that I can use the parts from the repair kit that I have let's see if it's similar enough oh there's a big old spring under here okay so we've got this piece here that spins and we have this piece here that spins this looks like maybe it's similar to the original let's get a repair kit here and it is definitely not there's no gears on the end like this so that won't work so this is definitely a lot closer to the original but that definitely just isn't going to work it's not close enough let's check out this replacement I have see the inside of it the nice thing oh I can't even well like probably could replace it with you this replacement now because all the wiring is different too what a bummer let's look inside this real quick and see the differences okay okay now this replacement is actually very similar but it is different that is crazy to me that there's so much difference in these we have the original Nintendo we have this aftermarket and then also this aftermarket and they're all significantly different significantly different enough that I can't you like interchange the parts from them I was really helping be able to fix this controller today but unfortunately it just wasn't in the cards for us but if you want to see this amazing special edition cleaned I'll put a link up on your screen now for that video thanks again to iFixit for sponsoring this video go to ifixit.com tronixfix I'll put a link right in the description thank you for watching today and I hope you have a good one now we got some Rugrats to play [Music]

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 301,690

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Id: ab_4wF1rNoA

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023