The most bizarre SNES problem

[Vitiman Z]

Could anyone help me with this? Recently, I picked up a copy of Star Fox off of Amazon and for some reason, whenever I play the game, these black scan lines go down the screen. Now, with a game like Star Fox, what with the Sector levels and the Asteroid areas that are mostly black, this ends up becoming a major problem. At first, I thought it was the A/V outs, so I swapped them with some from my N64. No dice. Then, I thought it was a problem with my SNES, so I tried another game. It worked flawlessly, so that solution was out. Finally, beat all, I decided to find a common denominator in this, so I tried out my copy of Yoshi's Island, a game which also uses Super FX. Sure enough, it had the black scan lines too. Now, this wouldn't be so much of a problem at all if it weren't for Star Fox's dark levels and the fact that, the longer you play, the more corrupted the image gets, to the point of the whole sprite layer becoming distorted. I can only assume this whole mess is because of something to do with the extra pins that the Super FX games use, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what. Can anyone help me? I would be very grateful!

[TheGameCollector]

Could anyone help me with this? Recently, I picked up a copy of Star Fox off of Amazon and for some reason, whenever I play the game, these black scan lines go down the screen. Now, with a game like Star Fox, what with the Sector levels and the Asteroid areas that are mostly black, this ends up becoming a major problem. At first, I thought it was the A/V outs, so I swapped them with some from my N64. No dice. Then, I thought it was a problem with my SNES, so I tried another game. It worked flawlessly, so that solution was out. Finally, beat all, I decided to find a common denominator in this, so I tried out my copy of Yoshi's Island, a game which also uses Super FX. Sure enough, it had the black scan lines too. Now, this wouldn't be so much of a problem at all if it weren't for Star Fox's dark levels and the fact that, the longer you play, the more corrupted the image gets, to the point of the whole sprite layer becoming distorted. I can only assume this whole mess is because of something to do with the extra pins that the Super FX games use, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what. Can anyone help me? I would be very grateful!

 

My ex had a weird problem with her SNES. No matter what copy of Final Fantasy III you used, the map screen would be all messed up. In most games there was no problems, but in certain specific games there was problems with scrolling graphics. A solution was never found and she decided to just buy another Super Nintendo.

[disjaukifa]

Yeah it sounds like part of the system board is going bad!!! Had to replace my wife's SNES because Super Mario World was making some odd noises when Mario did anything.

[Vitiman Z]

Okay, so I discovered (and fixed) the problem. You see, recently I had to switch to a 3rd party (and probably knock-off) AC adapter for my SNES. I hadn't noticed it until I played Star Fox though, so I was baffled that it did this all of a sudden. Just today, I found my original AC adapter, and decided to hook it up just so I could stop using that other... thing. Turns out, that was the problem!

 

Lesson? Never buy knock-off accessories. Period.

[thegamezmaster]

Okay, so I discovered (and fixed) the problem. You see, recently I had to switch to a 3rd party (and probably knock-off) AC adapter for my SNES. I hadn't noticed it until I played Star Fox though, so I was baffled that it did this all of a sudden. Just today, I found my original AC adapter, and decided to hook it up just so I could stop using that other... thing. Turns out, that was the problem!

 

Lesson? Never buy knock-off accessories. Period.

 

How right you are.

[jferio]

My guess is the third party wall wart wasn't quite up to the correct rating. Perhaps just enough to run a SNES "normally", but not when dealing with the "power hungry" FX chip in Starfox.

[disjaukifa]

My guess is the third party wall wart wasn't quite up to the correct rating. Perhaps just enough to run a SNES "normally", but not when dealing with the "power hungry" FX chip in Starfox.

 

Now I need to dig out my wife's old SNES and see if its still working. I think it had a 3rd party power adapter . . . would be neat to find out I have two good SNES.

[nathanallan]

Quality of the power supply is the issue; most cheap-o supplies put out very low voltage. Plus a lot of them are totally unregulated. A laptop power supply that is about $9 shipped usually does the trick for most of my videogaming needs.

[PsychoKittyNet]

I had used a 3rd party power adaptor before, and all of them had issues. They were universal NES/SNES/Genesis adaptors, the first one had the NES/Genesis plug die out but the SNES one worked fine. The second and third one died completly. I eventually found a SNES adaptor at a thrift store and bought one for my NES. It should be noted that an official SNES adaptor puts out 10 volts, but the knock off's only put out 9.