MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Faulty Mega Drive games (original hardware)

Recently I've had a problem with two Mega Drive games - they will not work at all on any of my Mega Drive consoles, unless used with my Mega Key region converter. All they do is give a very brief flash for a split second when you hit the power button, then a black screen, just like when you power the console without a cartridge inserted - no licensing text or anything.

I have four Mega Drive IIs, all Australian PAL models, as well as a crappy AtGames Mega Drive clone where both the FM and PSG (square wave/"Master System") sound is lower pitched than normal and both are at different pitches, making everything sound horribly out of tune. The Mega Key does not work at all with the AtGames console. I don't have a Mega Drive 1 unfortunately.

The games which refuse to work are Columns and Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf; the contacts on the games are spotless (as with all of my games), as with the console pins, and every other game works without any issues. Both games used to work until Columns started going flaky and required me to insert the game at a slight angle before it gave up working entirely; Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf on the other hand simply decided not to work after being stored for a number of years, despite being in very good condition (Columns is well used). If I use the Mega Key, both games work perfectly without any issues whatsoever, so it's not like the ICs are fried or anything like that. There are no bad solder joints or traces either.

If I run these two games in the AtGames console, all I get is either a black screen, a garbled mess of pixels, or simply the game menu itself.

I also swapped out the original 47µF 16V cap (which read 1.2Ω on the ESR meter) in Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf, didn't make any difference (replacement cap was 0.5Ω), but it still didn't boot without the Mega Key.

My main question is, has anyone else had any similar trouble with Mega Drive or Genesis games?