Hey everyone,

I finally got my VB the other day and this morning tried to give it a go. It’s completely new in original box with the original contents.

I’ve put fresh Duracell batteries into the controller, put a game in and turn it on. Nothing.

When I switch the controller back to OFF, I can hear a faint click from the VB speakers, so it’s clearly receiving power, but otherwise it doesn’t do anything.

When I look at the eyepieces with some light behind me I also see something move, I presume the mirrors, and when it’s switched off, they move back again. But otherwise it’s silent.

I can’t believe I went for a completely new system for this to happen, I am so crushed 🙁

Could anyone help?

Ok so things to check.

If you have a multimeter check the voltage on your battery pack to to rule out duff batteries and the like. Also the pins on the back of the controller sometimes don’t make good contact with the battery pack so just pull them out a little to ensure good contact.

Insert the game cart a few time 20 or so to ensure the connections are solid, this also helps if the contacts are dirty. Even new if this has been sitting around the contacts might still be dirty depending on where and how it’s been stored.

Some contact cleaner on the cart connector would also be a good start. As well as on the battery pack contact points.

If the unit can’t detect a game it won’t power on.

I’d be very surprised if it’s not working at all.

I bought mine as a non working unit that wouldn’t power on, this turned out to be dodgy contacts on the battery pack due to leakage and the controller pins not making proper contact with the battery pack. Obviously yours wont have the leakage issue but it may have a problem with the pins.

Thanks for your post Speedle. Turns out it does work after all! I was using my FlashBoyPlus, and a padded Mario’s Tennis didn’t work, but an unpadded VB Wario Land worked fine! So I guess it’s just the ROMs.

Sorry for the panic, but delighted it works! Now to figure out why the padding on Mario’s Tennis failed.

That’s good news then! 🙂 Enjoy!

gladders wrote:
Thanks for your post Speedle. Turns out it does work after all! I was using my FlashBoyPlus, and a padded Mario’s Tennis didn’t work, but an unpadded VB Wario Land worked fine! So I guess it’s just the ROMs.

Sorry for the panic, but delighted it works! Now to figure out why the padding on Mario’s Tennis failed.

Unfortunately, it’s an eventuality that the screens will fail. They will need soldered because Nintendo chose to glue the screens rather then solder them.

Dreammary wrote:
Unfortunately, it’s an eventuality that the screens will fail. They will need soldered because Nintendo chose to glue the screens rather then solder them.

Yeah, that sucks, what a bizarre design choice. Still, I know this forum will be very helpful in that event

Definitely! I have had both of my VB’s repaired with the solder fix and they work perfectly. 🙂

gladders wrote:
Thanks for your post Speedle. Turns out it does work after all! I was using my FlashBoyPlus, and a padded Mario’s Tennis didn’t work, but an unpadded VB Wario Land worked fine! So I guess it’s just the ROMs.

ROMs need to be padded to 16MBit to flash and load. Are you sure you aren’t using pre-padded ROMs? Perhaps your Mario Tennis ROM was corrupted or did not flash correctly?

Lester Knight wrote:
ROMs need to be padded to 16MBit to flash and load. Are you sure you aren’t using pre-padded ROMs? Perhaps your Mario Tennis ROM was corrupted or did not flash correctly?

Fairly sure as the size pre-padding was not 2MB. Perhaps I messed up somewhere on the line, I’ll redo.