Nintendo 64 S-video connection problems

Posted by admin on June 12th, 2012

I’ve started to get into a bit of retro gaming and recently bought a Nintendo N64 from ebay.  I wanted to connect it to my HD TV so I bought a standard Nintendo AV cable with an s-video connection. When I hooked it up the picture was absolutely atrocious and I wasn’t really sure why. I tried a different TV but similar problems. I was starting to think that the N64 was faulty but thanks to the power of the internet I discovered that PAL N64s need a slightly different cable than the standard one I bought which was supposed to work on SNES, N64 and Gamecube.

I got a cable from Rob at http://www.consolegoods.co.uk/ but you can also make your own if you are handy with a soldering iron, there’s information here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/nintendo-wii-ds-gaming/714660-help-n64-svideo-overbright-image.html.

Just out of interest the symptoms of having a wrong cable are that the picture on the TV is overly bright, so for instance if you play Super Mario 64 at the start there is a letter from Princess Toadstool and the writing on it is unreadable.  I will try to post some photos to show the difference.