You couldn’t wait to get your meaty hands on a Gamecube, so you bought the Japanese system when it came out last summer. Luigi’s Mansion and Super Monkey Ball were great, but now you wish you understood what the hell is going on. If only you’d waited a couple of more months, you’d be playing the American versions…
Well, now you can. Nintendo went out of their way to make sure piracy wouldn’t plague the ‘Cube like it did the PS One. The double-sided discs, the digital watermark, even the proprietary Mini-DVD technology are all solid ideas that should discourage those software pirate bastards. On the other hand, hardcore Nintendo fans were afraid that just like PlayStation 2 owners, they wouldn’t be able to play import games on the GameCube. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. All you need to turn your Japanese GameCube into a universal system is an hour of work, some decent soldering skills, a special screwdriver, and $6 worth of parts. If you’re not all thumbs and pay attention to what you’re doing, you shouldn’t have any problems. But just in case you’re a clumsy, fucked-up as a football-bat moron, GameCubeMod.com takes no responsibility for any damages to equipment, injury, or loss of life arising from the procedure described below. Use the information provided at your own risk! Having said that, here’s a list of what you’ll need:
Parts List
- soldering iron – a cheap 25-watt pencil iron is fine. Don’t get a heavy duty soldering gun-that’s only for plumbing.
- solder – buy the rosin core type, not the acid core variety. The acid core stuff is also only for plumbers.
- wrapping wire – really thin wire; easy to work with.
- electrical tape – any color or brand is fine.
- single pole, double throw (SPDT) switch – the smaller the better. Try to get the submini or micromini size. It should have two positions (on/off) and three terminals.
Necessary Tools: you absolutely need these to modify your Gamecube.
- drill or Dremel™ tool - for drilling the hole where you’ll mount the switch.
- needle-nose pliers – for getting screws out of tight spots, holding stuff while you solder, etc.
- 5mm external Line-Head® screwdriver or screwdriver bit – for the four screws on the casing.
- Phillips™ screwdriver – for all the other screws inside the system.
Optional Tools: these are helpful, but not absolutely necessary.
Multimeter: this mod is simple enough that you don’t need one, but if something’s not right, it’s easier to test your wiring with one. Try to get one that beeps.
Craft Knife: or any other type of sharp blade. For stripping and moving wires into tight spots, shaving plastic, etc.
Where To Get These Materials
Nintendo uses what are called “external Line Head® screws” to hold the Gamecube together. (They’re also the same screws used in the Super Nintendo, N64, and Game Boy systems). To get the four screws that hold the GameCube’s shell together out, you’ll need a long-handled screwdriver with a 4.5mm external Line-Head® bit.
To get external Line Head® screwdriver bits, click here.
If you’re ready to modify your Gamecube but don’t have any soldering experience, click here.
We’re not affiliated with Radio Shack in any way, but the Shack can’t be beat for one stop shopping. You can get every item on the Parts List from there.
A few things to remember before you start:
Keep all your screws in separate little boxes so you don’t misplace or confuse them when you’re putting the system back together.
Put a mousepad or something soft on your worktable so you don’t scratch up the system when you turn it over.
Opening The Gamecube
Turn the system over, and using a long-handled screwdriver with a 4.5mm external Line-Head® bit, remove the screws at the four corners.
Take the screws out and turn the system right-side up again. The top of the system should slide right off.
Locate and remove the two screws securing the cooling fan. Let the fan dangle off on its wires to one side. The back panel and controller ports of the system come off easily enough; simply grasp the clips around the posts with both hands and gently pull them forward. The controller ports will be connected to the main board by a ribbon cable. Take it between your thumb and forefinger and slide it upwards out of the connector. Locate the memory card connectors. They are thin pieces of metal held together by two screws each. Unscrew them and put them aside, and keep their long screws in the holes so you don’t lose them.
Now you’re ready to take the CD drive assembly off. There are about 16 screws all the way around the drive. Make sure you get all of them off and then pull the drive up and off the system.
See that shiny, silver metal grill? That’s the GameCube’s heat sink. It keeps the Flipper chip and the subprocessors nice and cool. Take all the screws off the heat sink, and pull them out with needle-nose pliers. Careful; these screws are in there very tight, and you don’t want to force them. To make sure we got these screws out without any danger of stripping them or damaging the main board, we used a powered screwdriver.
Nintendo used some putty-like material to tack the heat sink on the chips. Even after you remove the screws, the sink won’t come off. What you have to do here is grab the heat sink lengthwise at both ends and work it side to side while pulling up until it gives. Be careful not to work it far enough to knock up against the capacitors (round, little battery-looking things). When you get the heat sink off, you’ll see the main board, which you can leave at the bottom of the system.
Fuck the Mods
We’re almost ready to start soldering. First, take your switch and figure out where you want to mount it on your system. We recommend putting it on the back panel next to the AV port, because it’s out of the way, and because if something goes wrong with the drilling you can replace this plate and not have a big hole in your system.
Drill a hole big enough for the switch head to fit through, put a washer and nut on and tighten. Now is a good time to attach the wires to the switch. You don’t want to skip this step and solder the wires to the main board first, and then to the switch. The board is very delicate and if you pull too hard, you might rip the trace right off the board (very bad). For now, cut two 4-inch lengths of wrapping wire and strip the ends with your knife. Strip about half an inch on the side that will go to the switch, and only a quarter of an inch on the side that will go to the board. Wrap one wire end around the center post on the switch, and another to either of the two other posts. Solder the wires to their corresponding terminals on the switch, and cover them up with electrical tape when you’re done.
Here comes the tricky part. Locate the points near the back of the main board, next to Flipper. There are six tiny points just chillin together. The points you want are the two in the middle; when these two are joined the system will play U.S. games. You will be hooking these up to the switch in such a way so it connects these points when you have the switch one way, and disconnects them when you flip it the other way. One point on the board is labeled R6, the other point is directly opposite. Take the wire that you connected to the center post on your switch, and solder the other end to R6. Now solder the pin opposite of R6 to your other wire. Take a couple of strips of electrical tape and tape down your wires to take the stress off the joints. You can check to see if you did everything correctly with a multimeter. Place the meter’s test leads on the switch terminals, and set the meter to measure resistance (ohms). The multimeter should beep or show “0.0” when you flip the switch one way, and it shouldn’t beep or read “OL” when you flip it the other way. If this doesn’t happen, check your soldering and the switch to make all the wires are connected properly. When you’re satisfied that things are working as they should, you’ll be ready to test the system and put it back together. On to part three…
Testing and Reassembly
Before you put the system back together, we recommend you take a minute to test it; that way you don’t have to take it apart again if something’s screwy. If you haven’t done so already, clip the back plate of the system with the new switch back on. Now take a look at your switch. Depending on what size switch you have, and provided you mounted it in the same place we did, you’ll have to bend back a tiny bit of metal shielding on the drive assembly so it will fit. With a pair of pliers, bend back enough metal shielding so that the switch fits comfortably. Make sure the electrical tape you put over the switch terminals completely covers them up and prevents them from touching the metal, or this could keep your switch from working properly. Put the drive assembly on, and slide the connector on the bottom of the drive to the main board. Hook the video cable and power cord up (remember that the power plug is mounted on the cooling fan). Press down the power button on top of the fan, and watch the logo on your TV. The menu that comes up should be in English. Flip the switch, turn the system off, then on again. The menu should come up in Japanese. Presto!
Disconnect the system and take the CD drive back out. Take the heat sink and put a small piece of electrical tape on the underside, directly above where your newly soldered wires will sit. If you don’t do this, the wires may short to the sink and the mod won’t work. Screw the heat sink back where it was, carefully now, since you don’t want to upset your soldering. Now put all the screws that go with the drive back. You’ll have a couple left over, but that’s ok because they would have gone where the bent-back shielding is. Put the memory card terminals back, making sure to have the “bump” side facing out. Slide the ribbon cable from the controller ports back into its connector, and clip the controller ports back on. Put the shell over everything and turn the Gamecube over. Tighten the screws while simultaneously pressing the shell down. Make sure not to over-tighten any screws, or the drive door won’t open. Congratulations…your Japanese Gamecube will now play all those great American games it couldn’t play before!
Final Notes
Enjoy your new universal Gamecube. By universal, we mean it will play American and Japanese games. It won’t play any European games, because they use a different type of TV format over in Europe; but that’s ok because there aren’t any Euro-exclusive games you’ll be missing out on. In fact, if all you really want is to play American games on your Japanese GameCube, the only thing you have to do is to connect a small wire between the two points and close the system back up! You can modify an American Gamecube to play Japanese games too. The procedure is the same, except that there will be a jumper already connecting the two points in an American system. You’ll have to remove the jumper before you hook up the switch. If you fried your system and have questions on how to fix it, you’re a dumbass and we don’t want to hear from you.
On the other hand, if you have some idea of what you’re doing, but have a few questions, email us at tech@gamecubemod.com.