What is the BennVenn JOEYGG Cart Flasher for Sega Game Gear?
The BennVenn JoeyGG for Sega Game gear will essentially rip a ROM from any Game Gear Game cartridge as well then the ability to upload (Flash) a Game Gear Flash Cartridge. The following features have been taken from the BennVenn Site:
- Fast, easy, reliable access to all your Sega Game Gear ROM’s and Save files
- Supports reflashing our in-house Flash carts, and some of the latest Chinese bootleg carts. Simply drag your ROM to your Joey drive and it’ll automatically write the new ROM to the cart.
- Enjoy some of the best ROM hacks and remakes on real hardware.
- You cannot rewrite original Sega carts.
- Can load directly from cart into emulators.
- Firmware updates over USB C – just drag and drop the new firmware.
- 710kbytes/sec dump speed, ~310kbytes/second flash speed.
Using the BennVenn JoeyGG on a Windows PC
This is quite literally a plug and play solution.
Upon plugging the Joey in to My PC along with a game attached, a folders window is loaded showing the contents of the Joey.
The next step is to simply copy the ROM.GG to wherever you would like it saved. In the video I simply put it on my desktop.
Finally swap the cartridge out for the Flash cartridge (available seperately) and drag and drop the ROM.GG file on to the new cartridge.
You now have the game moved from your old tired cart to a nice new cart.
What's needed for the install?
What you get when ordering is the Joey GG (Pictured).
This alone will not do anything. You will need to install a cartridge slot, sourced yourself.
What I used for the install is as follows:
- Desolder gun (optional)
- Desolder wick
- Solder iron
- Solder wire
Installing the cartridge slot
Installing the cartridge slot is actully fairly straight forward and requires a low amount os skill. Desoldering the cartridge slot is probably the most difficult part. To desolder I tried a number of techniques until I bit the bullet and bought a desolder gun. The various ways I tried to remove the Cartridge slot:
- Using desolder wick and a pump – this was difficult and took a lot of time. First i reomved as much as possible using the desolder pump, followed up with the wick. The results were OK but took a long time and was very frustrating.
- Using a heat gun – I would advise against this method. The heat gun worked although it melted the plastic on the slot and caused the pins to become unaligned making it difficult to reinstall elsewhere.
- Desolder Gun – This is my prefered option, it was much quicker, a lot less fuss and much cleaner.
Once you have your cartridge slot, installing on to the JoeyGG was straight forward, I ligned up one row of pins in the respective holes, followed than by the second row, this is a bit fiddly and a pair of tweezers would help to guide the pins.
With all of the pins in the holes, soldering then in one by one is a breeze and very easy
Videos and guides to the BennVenn JoeyGG cart flasher
The Official Site has all of the info incuded in this article.
The BennVenn Discords are always the best source for help on their products
Coming Soon: This video I have made to show how to install the cart slot as well as how to use the Joey on a Windows PC.
Game Gear 512kbyte Cart
Taken from the Bennvenn Product page:
Supplied in a new repro GameGear cart shell, this reflashable cart will contain up to 512kbytes of mapped ROM Data using 5volt flash for reliability and safety.
Gold fingers for the best connection, 3volt regulator for the mapper IC, Jumper pad to set GameGear or SMS mode.
This cart does not contain save ram though for homebrew, the flash can be re-written in game.
Can be flashed with our JoeyGG cart flasher. Possibly other flashers too though this is untested.
Where can I Buy a BennVenn Joeygg for the Sega Game Gear
Currently Zedlabz in the UK is selling this as well as Bennvenn directly
Where can I Buy a BennVenn Game Gear 512kbyte flash Cart
Currently Zedlabz in the UK is selling this as well as Bennvenn directly
What else does BennVenn Have for the Sega Game Gear?
Ben is very active on his discords so I would advise anyone with an interest in BennVenn developments to Join them. At the moment a GGHD screen is on the way and as soon as they are available I will be puirchasing one for my collection and will review on this site.
My Thoughts
BennVenn JoeyGG Cart Flasher
Overall
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Features
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Ease of install
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Build Quality
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Availability
Summary
The JoeyGG does exactly as advertised.
Pros
- Easy to use
- No software to install
- Create you’re own library of ROM Back ups
- Load ROM Hacks and Homebrew games
- Preserve your expensive/unopened/collectable games
- Reusable flash cart
Cons
- Will need to source your own cartridge slot
- The need to install the cartridge slot
- There are no replacement cartidge slots on the market
