Hi all,
I bought a Donkey Kong Jr Panorama Screen G&W like 2-3 years ago on eBay, game only, no box, not really beat up, the sound didn't work, but it was generally in pretty good shape when I got it. I kept my G&Ws hidden away for the longest time without batteries in them (mainly due to the fact that in the store they're like $5 for one) but recently I started collecting them again and decided it was time to stop storing them in my desk drawer. I found a really awesome wholesaler of batteries on eBay & bought enough strips of Maxell batteries to power all 23 I have now.
Now, every single G&W save for like 2 that I've bought recently, has a set of Maxell batteries in it, and they've all been working properly for 2-3 months since I decided to display them. I went to put my DK Jr. on display and I noticed that the vines in the upper-leftmost corner were very dim, as well as a platform toward the middle & Donkey Kong, during 2 of his 3 frames of "animation" when he raises his arm with the lock on it, also visibly fades. I thought that there was something wrong with the LCD, but there was no visible damage, the light filter/screen was unblocked, etc. I kinda gently tapped it a little bit, reseated the batteries, etc, nothing.
Then I replaced the batteries, thinking that maybe the wholesaler had them sitting for a while and maybe they began to lose their charge. Bingo, the LCD came back clear as day! In that "test pattern" that shows every portion of the LCD when you first put the batteries in, everything showed perfectly. So two days or so later, I notice that the same parts of the screen are dimming again... Again, I play with it to try & get it back to normal, because, "There's no way that batteries can die in 2 days?!" So on the off-chance that it was the batteries, I put another fresh pair in... another 2-3 days passed, and as of last night they were dying... again. So, just to ensure once & for all that this is indeed the problem, I put in some other brand of batteries I had gotten recently with a Tropical Fish game I had bought on eBay, that the seller kicked in for free. Sure enough, again, the LCD lit up brilliantly. Now, I'm already starting to notice fading in those same spots, and it's been around 24 hours since I put the 3rd pair in.
Has anyone run into this problem before? (And not even necessarily with a G&W, with anything that takes batteries that has had this problem) Googling the problem brings up everything from "a broken circuit", to "psychic phenomena" about people draining watch batteries with their body's electrical field, cell phone batteries, ipods, etc, i.e. - nothing useful. I really love the Panorama Screen games because they're so colorful, (I have Snoopy, too & a Tabletop Mario's Cement Factory) but it's super impractical to keep throwing batteries into this thing every 2 days or so. And I'm hesitant to take it apart because I don't really know what I'm looking for that could be broken (and moreover that I could even fix if I did identify the problem). Anyway, thanks in advance for any advice anyone can provide.
