I was given this game after the previous owner damaged it while trying to reflow a chip in hopes of getting rid of intermittent saving issues. 

My guess is that the previous owner used too much pressure while sweeping the soldering iron across all the pins. Too much pressure in addition to the heat is more than enough to weaken traces and damage them in a blink of an eye. This type of damage can be avoided with practice but at least they gave it a shot! I can only hope they continue! I had my fair share of botches when I first started and its noting to be ashamed of. If you can't cringe at your early work then are you really improving?

That being said there is still plenty of damage that needs addressing. We could swap all the ICs onto a donor board or something OR we can repair all the traces using the 30 gauge, two pairs of tweezers, and plenty of patience!

In order to repair the damaged pads and traces I used 30 gauge wire to make new pads to solder the chip to. Some traces were repaired by bridging jumper wire over the damaged area and using corresponding pads to tact the wire to in order to keep it from moving when heated up and others by using vias to solder one side of a jumper wire to then soldering the other side to the chip once its in place.

This method is very unorthodox but a lot of fun!