Need Appliance Repairs Fast? Look for an Appliance Repair Company With Certain Characteristics: Restore A Classic Nintendo With NESessity!

Say you find an original NES at a garage sale or flea market for $5, as was the case for Long Island Retro Gaming (LIRG) in the video below. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, such a low-priced unit won’t work, which wasn’t a surprise here, especially considering its heavily yellowed outer shell. In this case, the internals were in very bad shape, which, according to LIRG, meant that it was submerged in water at one point during its lifetime. Therefore, restoring this particular NES to its former glory and/or state of neglect was a non-trivial matter.

Shot boards or not, the NES did provide two elements critical to the device’s operation, intact CPU and PPU chips. The rest, you might say, is just details. In reality, “details” here is just a bit of an understatement, but as it just so happens, Tindarian Low Budget sells something called the NESessity v1.3, a full replacement PCB package for the NES console. This board–or, more accurately, set of 3 boards–is available as a solder kit with components, or there’s a components list if you perfer to source things yourself. This allows you to build up you new NES with (almost) all modern components.

You will have to source the CPU, PPU, and possibly the crystal oscillator (as they can be hard to buy new), along with the actual shell and mechanical components like the 72-pin cartridge connector. Of course, if you don’t have an old Nintendo, clones of the CPU and PPU chips are available, though they may have some issues according to Low Budget. The finished LIRG build seen here features a Blinking Light Win aftermarket cartridge connector, which seems like a good option for your Frankensteined NES console.

A New NES in 2021?

In the video, LIRG goes through the assembly of the board, wisely starting with surface mount and other low-profile parts, before moving on to components that will interfere with the soldering operation. Once things are in place, the board + CPU/PPU chips become a more or less a drop-in replacement for the original NES internals. One does, however need to reverse the power LED leads to allow it to light up with this new board, a fairly trivial operation considering the circumstances.

The video does a good job of pointing out that while this method certainly is much easier than restoring a trashed NES PCB, it does take a significant amount of soldering work to get the board working. One would have to guess that most retro-gaming aficionados willing to open up a console wouldn’t want it to be too easy–or at least wouldn’t want to pay the money to have someone else put it together for them!

New – and Improved!

While you might call it a drop-in, this board isn’t a 1-for-1 replacement, as much an upgrade. It features a modern power supply with a massive heat sink, and an auxiliary switch that you can user for your own purposes. The new boards also feature composite video, along with stereo outputs. If you’d like to take things a few steps further, the device is compatible with NES RGB or Hi-Def NES mods. Either, will take a bit more hacking and sourcing on your end.

What a beautiful heat sink!

A series of 3 potentiometers modify the sound output, one of which is used to control Famicom expansion audio functionality. This allows for sound characteristics that you’ve likely never heard if you’re in the US, with everything able to be adjusted to your taste in terms of volume. The device has a Famicom-style expansion port for such accessories, and even features a microphone so that you can yell at it and have something actually happen (for example in the Japanese edition of Zelda). The system is region-free, and simply requires a cartridge adapter to play Famicom games.

All things considered, it’s an excellent video for what appears to be an excellent board. What’s shown in the LIRG build is the NESessity version 1.3, which has gone through multiple iterations. It’s clearly been a popular choice for many people; it’s currently sold out with new stock arriving soon. The second video below features Low Budget showing off the v1.1 NESessity board himself, which appears to be largely similar to the 1.3 version that LIRG put together.