Looking for capacitor values for replacement in game carts.

[AppleKid | 4]

Hey all,

Maybe my Googling is bad, but I can't seem to find what I feel is a reliable answer yet. I'm looking to replace the caps in all of my games and I was wondering if anyone knew if most games used the same sized caps and what values they are. I know there's some odds ones like Starfox, Mega Man X2/3, Mario RPG etc. on SNES but typically SNES seems to have a similar sized cap for most other games.

The consoles I'm looking into currently are:

NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom(probably the same as SNES) N64, SMS, Genesis, Mega Drive(J), Gameboy, Game Gear.

Some of these games may not even use caps for all I know but I wanted to reach out to the community first to see if anybody else has done research on this topic before I go opening up a ton of my games.

Still thinking how I want to tackle opening Mega Drive(J) games, assuming I need to. That's gonna be tricky.

Thank you for any help at all!

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

You don't need to replace the caps in any of your games.  Tantulam caps will outlast you, and electrolytics last many decades.  Unless the caps are specifically used in sound circuits inside consoles themselves, you wouldn't even notice any perceptible difference in performance if you did swap in new ones.  That being said, I only ever play around with NES game pcb's, and their electrolytic caps are almost always 22 uf at 6.3 volts...

[AppleKid | 4]

Interesting information. Thanks for the reply and the cap info Morbis!

[austin532 | 467]

I know that some copies of Star Fox have a bad capacitor. https://www.retrorgb.com/star-fox-cartridge-capacitor-concern.html

Also it's common for the caps to go bad on Super Gameboys.