TV, System, or Cartridge?

silence1186

So I fired up my SNES to play some final fantasy III for nostalgia's sake, and when fighting the final boss, large swaths of color on the screen were wrong. Greens instead of yellows, etc. I put in Chrono Trigger and Megaman X just to check, and they had big problems with coloration.

Is there a way to determine if the problem with the coloration has to do with the cartridges themselves, the SNES I am playing them on, or the 25 year old TV the system is hooked up to?

JHunz

Well, to test the TV you could obviously hook something else up to the same inputs and see if it also looks crap, and to test the SNES you could hook it up to another TV (take it to someone else's house if it's your only TV). I've had somewhat similar problems with a couple old CRT monitors. With one of them the problem turned out to be the connector that the video cable went into, and with the other one it turned out to be the cable itself. If it turns out to be the cable that's attached to the SNES, though, it'll probably be a pain in the ass to replace.

Robes

It sounds like a bad yellow cable (the yellow composite cable that streams video to the tv)

Essee

JHunz wrote:

If it turns out to be the cable that's attached to the SNES, though, it'll probably be a pain in the ass to replace.

Good news! I'm 99% certain that, in actuality, every video connector from the SNES up through at least the Gamecube (but not the Wii-- although I swear you could probably still use the same cable if you filed off that little bit of plastic at the bottom) is actually identical. So you can easily grab composite or even component cables! I know I never originally bought a composite cable for my SNES, but I played it using one on my new TV about two years ago, so the cable I used had to have been my backup Gamecube cable. Even a Wii cable might conceivably do the trick, although as I mentioned, the ordinary connector has an extra piece of plastic at the bottom that is PROBABLY cosmetic, but I don't know for sure that it's the same shape. Of course, this supposes that you're wanting composite or component cables... I'm pretty sure you can still find RF adapters for Gamecube (and others) as well, but they're going to be a lot rarer than the better cables since most people have moved on. Besides, the other cables are much better anyway! :P

Personally, I'm willing to bet on one of two things: 1) Your TV is having trouble, be it with the input or the tube itself, since it's 25 years old, or 2) You either had crummy third-party cables (since that used to occasionally matter back then), or your first-party cables have gotten beaten up over the years. I know I had a third-party RF switch that I bought to use for multiple consoles on an old TV, back in the day, that turned out not to provide the proper color range and be blurry, so I had to replace it. Pretty sure it's not going to be your SNES or any of your cartridges... Nintendo's consoles and cartridges are very hardy stuff. Cables are easier to break.

silence1186

I don't have a split AV cable, it's the original RF cable (I think that's right) that came with the SNES.

kuhlmeye

You could try picking up a new composite cable?

They are apparently pretty cheap.

Essee

silence1186 wrote:

I don't have a split AV cable, it's the original RF cable (I think that's right) that came with the SNES.

I had a feeling you might be... so this very well could be the original cable starting to die. Unless you MUST be using an RF cable because you only have one TV and that's all it supports, I highly recommend investing the tiny amount in a composite or component cable, depending on what the TV(s) you own support(s). Not only will this confirm that the cable is no longer an issue, you'll love how much better the picture will look, seriously. As pointed out, they're really cheap, and if you don't want to order one online you can easily grab one from Gamestop (maybe you can even find a slightly used one to save some cash) or wherever else you like that's brick-and-mortar, too. If you still want to use your old TV, which I suspect might not have composite inputs, you could always see if you can find a converter or even just a VCR/DVD player that you can hook to it, since nowadays the cheap ones you find almost always have composite inputs on the front of them that you can use.

silence1186

Yeah, the TV only has an RF input. I tried moving it to another TV once, but I couldn't get the RF cable to work with the RF input. This TV was only about 18 years old, so it had a RF input and a AV 3 color split. If I can just buy a component? composite? (one is a 3 way, and one is a 5 way split, I think?) and use that, I guess that'd work.

Robes

You'll want to pick up a composite cable yeah.

Madpanda

http://www.racketboy.com/store/super-nintendo-snes/nintendo-av-cables.html

I can vouch for their svideo cables.

If you still get issues its most likely the tv. Depending on size you can pickup a decent one at pawn shops/garage sales/craigslist for under $50, probably closer to $20 or free if its a smaller one.