Nintendo 64 picture too bright to play. Help?

[Geoff the Axe]

Hey all.
Plugged in my N64 recently and found that the picture is so bright that driving on ice tracks in Mario Kart is literally impossible - just a washed-out looking Wario endlessly circling in a complete sea of white.
It's happening to all games I own - the whites are so bright it's ugly at best and impossible to see at worst. All the dark colours are washed out and bright and anything on the light end of the spectrum is so bright it's hard to look at.
Definitely not a TV issue - none of the picture settings on the tv make a difference. Plus the SNES is working fine.

I have a PAL 64, hooked up to a plasma TV via RCA cables.
The TV has several single 3.5mm inputs for different input types (RCA, component, etc) but provides plenty of adaptors. These are all working fine - the SNES has no issues and looks great.

The thing that's really driving me crazy is the fact that it was working fine about two weeks ago. I moved house, packed it all up and when I've set it up again it's doing this crazy white thing.
I've searched a lot around the net for solutions, and so far the best one has been to break open the cable connector with a hammer and solder in a resistor. Obviously this is a complete last resort.
It's bugging me so much because as far as I can tell, this is an issue that may affect some old consoles used with some HD TVs, but everything was working great until I unplugged it and plugged it back in.

If anyone has any help, advice, suggestions, questions, anything, it would be hugely appreciated.


Lastly, apologies if this issue is covered elsewhere in the forum - I couldn't find it.

[Exhuminator]

If anyone has any help, advice, suggestions, questions, anything, it would be hugely appreciated.

I'll tell you what I would try, I don't know if any of this is good advice though:

Try replacing the RCA cables with new ones.

Try disabling automatic brightness settings on the TV, try it with or without GAME MODE on.

Try the N64 on a different TV, see if the problem follows the N64.

See if that plasma has a service mode that lets you reset any kind of stored value settings for known inputs. This is called something else that I can't remember sorry.

If for some crazy reason the N64 is actually outputting over-range-signal beyond the standard spec of RCA, try using a different video output-input that's not RCA, like s-video, or SCART, or whatever the PAL N64 supports outputting.

Try putting a decent RCA selector in the mix. If for some reason the N64 is outputting too high a white signal, maybe a middle man RCA selector will attenuate the signal to standard values.

Maybe your N64 is a white supremacist and needs ethnic value counseling.

[ElkinFencer10]

Maybe your N64 is a white supremacist and needs ethnic value counseling.

If you see anything that says "Make America Great Again" on your console, this is probably the issue. Unfortunately, by that point, the damage to the logic unit in the CPU is, sadly, irreparable. It's best to put it out of its misery.

[Thierry Henry]

Had a similar type of issue regarding my PAL N64, with an overly bright and at the same time washed out look.

Hopped on to eBay and found the relevant AV cables I was looking for.
(I'll try later and find that seller).



I went from this:








To this:

[Ziggy]

The PAL Nintendo cables absolutely require a resistor and/or capacitor inside of them!

Check this site for the necessary info (scroll down and take a look at the table): http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av:nintendomultiav

You can check your cable with a multi meter to see if it has a resistor or not. It's also possible that it has the resistor, but the ground connection broke and this is why it no longer works when it previously did.

Also, http://www.ebay.com/itm/AV-Audio-Video- ... Swu4BVpcji

[Geoff the Axe]

Had a similar type of issue regarding my PAL N64, with an overly bright and at the same time washed out look.

Hopped on to eBay and found the relevant AV cables I was looking for.
(I'll try later and find that seller).

Those pictures are *exactly* what I'm dealing with. If there's any chance you could find which cable you bought, that would be a massive help and I'd owe you big time!!

[Ziggy]

Note the eBay link in my post above.

[Geoff the Axe]

The PAL Nintendo cables absolutely require a resistor and/or capacitor inside of them!

Check this site for the necessary info (scroll down and take a look at the table): http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av:nintendomultiav

You can check your cable with a multi meter to see if it has a resistor or not. It's also possible that it has the resistor, but the ground connection broke and this is why it no longer works when it previously did.

Also, http://www.ebay.com/itm/AV-Audio-Video- ... Swu4BVpcji

Thanks heaps Ziggy. I think you might be right about the ground connection breaking - I was able to borrow an AV cable from my brother's SNES and the N64 games look good as new.

Do you know if the AV cables in the second link you posted are ready to go, or would I have to put a resistor in?

[Ziggy]

The eBay link I posted doesn't specifically mention resistors, but I would assume they would have to have them. They're advertised as PAL cables (which require the resistors), and the seller even shows the brightness problem you would have if using NTSC cables on a PAL system.

[Thierry Henry]

Had a similar type of issue regarding my PAL N64, with an overly bright and at the same time washed out look.

Hopped on to eBay and found the relevant AV cables I was looking for.
(I'll try later and find that seller).

Those pictures are *exactly* what I'm dealing with. If there's any chance you could find which cable you bought, that would be a massive help and I'd owe you big time!!

Rob Webb over at http://www.robwebb1.plus.com/n64/n64.htm sells good quality combo AV/ S-Video N64 cables, specially wired for PAL systems.

Does your TV support S-Video? If so, bonus.