Hey everyone, it's Colin. How's it goin'?
The Sega Game Gear tried to one-up the Nintendo Game Boy by offering a color screen.
And while that screen was really the highlight of the console,
it had some major drawbacks,
like image ghosting, a washed-out appearance, and uneven backlighting.
It's that last point we'll be looking at today.
It's been a long time since late 1990, when the Game Gear came out,
and we have a new option available.
Stick with me and we'll see what it takes to upgrade a Game Gear
to a modern LED backlight from Hand-Held Legend.
The Game Gear's a bit more involved to disassemble than other handhelds,
but I still wouldn't consider it all that hard.
There are six Phillips screws on the backside, with two hidden inside the battery compartments.
Remove the single Gamebit screw inside the cartridge bay, and you
can carefully open the system up.
Disconnect the wiring harnesses from the back housing, and set it aside.
You should now be looking at the reason for the system's poor backlight quality.
Underneath that silver reflector is what's essentially a small fluorescent tube.
This is what we'll be replacing.
To get that tube removed and perform the rest of the modifications, we need to remove the logic board.
Take out these silver screws around the perimeter,
along with the two black screws on either side of the cartridge connector.
Then, the board should just lift out.
But be careful here,
because the ribbon cable for the LCD panel is soldered to the front side of the board
and you don't want to damage it.
The whole board and LCD should come out as one unit.
Let's get right to it and remove the old backlight.
Set the reflector aside, but don't get rid of it. We'll need it again later.
Find the two solder points on the front side of the board for the backlight bulb.
Desolder these points and the bulb should fall out.
Florescent tubes operate at a high voltage, so they need some additional components to make them work,
and we'll be removing those next.
These are the parts that need to go.
And while it may be tempting to just cut the legs, you'll want to desolder them.
We need to reuse a few solder points as part of putting the new backlight in later.
Once those components are out, we need to bridge two of the solder points where a component used to be.
It's at position L2,
where that yellow cylinder-looking part was.
I used a small piece of wire between the two,
but you may be able to get away with just a big solder blob.
Doing this, incidentally, will allow the brightness knob on the side of the Game Gear to work with the new backlight.
This is where things start to get a bit more tricky.
The white plastic diffuser needs to be taken off of the LCD panel next.
It's glued down on one side,
so you need to carefully run a craft knife
between the diffuser and the glass of the LCD panel to release it.
The other side of the diffuser is just cliipped on.
Get your new LED backlight panel handy.
It's gonna be used as a template for marking where to cut the diffuser.
Line them up like this, then use a marker to trace down either side.
We're doing this because the backlight module takes the place of the diffuser,
but as we just saw, the diffuser is also used as a mounting bracket for the screen,
So the center part of the diffuser needs to get cut out where the backlight will go.
To actually cut the diffuser, I strongly recommend you use a fine-toothed saw
or a rotary tool like a dremel.
Here's why:
I tried to use a utility knife...
and ended up
just breaking the plastic.
Normally it works just fine
to cut plastic this way, but the diffuser is just too brittle.
If you find yourself in the same situation though, don't worry.
Super or Crazy Glue works just fine to put the pieces back together.
When you're done, you should end up with two side brackets.
Now, I found this next step to be super super fiddly.
We're ready to put the screen and logic board back in,
but because the diffuser's been cut up, the screen won't stay in place if it's put back in first.
What worked for me was to temporarily attach the screen
directly to the logic board
using the diffuser bracket and a few screws.
Then, I was able to set the whole thing back into the front housing
and have the screen be aligned properly.
I took the protective film off the backlight and put it face down onto the screen
after making sure it was clean.
We want the wires of the backlight pointing up,
and the backlight itself pushed right up against that center screw post.
I carefully removed the screws holding the brackets, dropped the reflector back on,
then put the screws in for good.
The rest of the screws for the logic board can go back in now too.
Alright, the hardest parts are over. Just a bit of soldering now.
The black wire from the backlight can get soldered to this single pad,
underneath where the transformer was.
I know a lot of my viewers likely don't keep heat-shrink tubing on hand,
so I did this next step with them in mind.
I put a piece of electrical tape on the board in this spot,
then trimmed down one of the legs of the resistor that came with the backlight.
It needs to get soldered to the middle of the five solder points,
right next to where it says "C32" on the board.
Then, trim down the other leg and solder the red wire to it.
I put another piece of tape over the top just to be safe.
After all that, just reconnect the cables to the back housing,
put it back together, throw in some batteries, and give it a test.
What I noticed right away is that while the brightness is similar, it's much more even.
It's no longer brighter in the middle and darker at the edges.
Granted, there's a few hot spots on one edge where the LEDs are,
but it's still a solid improvement.
That said, keep in mind that this mod won't address the ghosting or washed-out look of the screen.
That's a limitation of the LCD itself.
There's an interesting side benefit to doing this mod that may make it worth doing,
even if you don't care about improving the backlight.
One of the biggest criticisms of the Game Gear,
even when it was launched, is that it has poor battery life.
I tested mine before doing the mod and found that while running the demo screen of a game on a loop,
a set of six new alkaline batteries lasted for about six hours.
After doing the mod, I repeated the same process, and the results really surprised me.
Over *sixteen* hours with the Hand-Held Legend backlight.
Of course, actually playing games will use a bit more power,
but still, you can expect to get at least twice the battery life.
Admittedly, this is a somewhat challenging mod to do,
not made any easier by the design of the Game Gear itself.
But if you're a fan of the console and want to improve the playing experience,
or if the original backlight in yours has failed,
or even if you're tired of just replacing the batteries all the time, well,
I think the mod is worth it.
Just take your time and have some patience.
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And, as always, thanks for watching.