I recently bought a faulty “Gakken Super Cobra” game on Swedish eBay. It is a handheld device that was released in 1981/82, based on Konami’s arcade game. In this post I describe the quick repair I conducted on the game, and provide some images of its inside. The unit would not power on with batteries, and the reason was quite obvious, as the battery connectors showed signs of corrosion, probably due to the previous owner leaving old batteries inside the unit.
Disassembling the unit is straight-forward, just remove the two battery hatches (labeled “L” and “R”) and the five screws marked in red in the image below.
To test the unit, I connected my bench power supply to the external power connector of the game, as shown below.
Happy days, the unit powered on with a 6V load, and the display + audio + buttons worked flawlessly! To fix the connectors, I desoldered the power cables (marked in red below) and put the connectors in a vinegar bath, followed by grinding them a little bit with my dremel tool.
Then, I reattached the connectors to the game, and inserted four fresh LR14 1.5V batteries.
There we go, the unit works perfectly now! I am seriously considering collecting these larger handhelds from this era. I think they have their charm, and I love their dark screens and neon-like graphics!