Fixing a Faulty Game Boy Color Start Button

It's Easier than You Might Think...

Growing up as a boy in the 1990s, I loved video games. Sure, they were simpler than they are now, but they had charm and personality. While home consoles and desktop computers were the usual way I’d play games, I was always jealous of my friends who had portable, handheld ones. For Christmas in 1994 I got a Sega Game Gear and was so excited! It had a backlit screen and came with Sonic, so I was clearly winning over my sister and her Game Boy with Tetris and Super Mario Land. The dream was short-lived though. Between the horrible battery life and the poor implementation of Sonic on such a small screen, I stopped playing it and never really gave it a fair shake but 5 years later I would finally get my own Game Boy, but now in color!

My original Game Boy Color that I got in October of 1999, along with my first ever Game Boy game: Pokemon Red.

Fast forward roughly 20 years and thousands of game hours and here we are. It still runs like a champ. To this day, the Game Boy/Game Boy Color is still my favorite Nintendo handheld console; so when I started playing the early Pokemon games again (something I try to do every year or so) I was troubled to find the start button was not responding without pushing down really hard with my thumb nail. Here is an example of what I mean…

I figured it was probably a busted membrane; a problem I’d seen many times with my kids’ third party switch controllers, but before ordering replacements I figured I should just open it up and make sure.