Game Gear Capacitor Kit | All Versions

Works perfectly on all VA1 easy to use, great doc from retrosix!

This was a perfect kit to repair my Game Gear. Came with everything I needed. Highly recommended!

I started with this kit in my quest to revive my childhood Game Gear. It didn't get much love back then because it gobbled up AA's, and then the screen started to dim and the speaker got low in later years and then it was a brick.

I've recapped 3 Game Gears now and this kit restored all of them into playable condition. However, I noticed a weird sort of vertical-ghosting effect on the screen after restoring them with the new capacitors (I used red lines to indicate what I'm referring to in the image, similar to "jail bars" but it's a kind of vertical ghosting matching the dark lines of the brick floor below). My soldering improved each time but I got the exact same results, so I'm not sure if this is my fault, the fault of aging equipment, or a fault in the capacitors (they aren't exact-matches for the values of the originals, but I don't know if that matters). Overall I was still happy with the results and spent many hours playing Sonic 2 and I beat it for the first time!

There is one cap on the main board that is tucked right up under where the cable that plugs into the power board is attached and another plastic-shelled component; I melted a lot of that blue plastic on my original unit, but fortunately I did not appear to do any actual damage. If you're a novice like me, I recommend thinking out your approach first on this one, and try to be quick about it.

When I took the plunge on replacing the screen with the cleanscreen, the visual ghosting was gone entirely so if you recap your Game Gear and notice that ghosting but plan on upgrading the screen too, know that it won't carry over to the new screen.

Have patience, take care as these caps are VERY small and have to be soldered directly to their sides (no leads/legs), and use flux and clean the pads as you go! I had choppy/buzzy audio after my first attempt; going back and cleaning up my work on the main board caps fixed that right up.

Given the small components the kit has, it's best if you have a dedicated soldering station with a heatgun. It was easy to install for me as I have worked with this before, but it could be desperating for some people. Take your caution.

Great little kit and clear enough instructions. My first game gear recap and it went smooth. Kit comes with more of the small caps than you need in case you lose a couple.

I love the smd form factor. I have to say though the cap values are extremely out of spec. If they were 10 most 20% difference I wouldn't care but they only provide 3 different values (100uF, 10uF & 1uF) on average most of them are 50% out of spec and C1 is almost 70% . The real issue is trying to replace 10 different cap values with only the 3 that comes in the kit. Your Game Gear will work after installation but I couldnt say the long term damage that could these could cause.

I would highly recommend going with the other electrolytic capacitors set handheldlegends sell from Console 5