Snes or FFIII issues

I recently purchased FFIII on eBay and the cart is in great cosmetic condition. The pins also look very clean. I put it in my SNES and everything worked fine until about the third battle. At that point it would present some graphical issues with the enemy sprites and then freeze after the battle. I tried it a few more time and got the same issue. I've had similar issues with some , but not every, other, less expensive games but assumed it was an issue with those carts. I cleaned my pins very well with the official SNES cleaning kit, but noticed some of the pins didn't look perfectly aligned. I then figured if replace the pin connector with one from an old SNES whose motherboard died. The newly replaced pin connector looked to be in perfect condition. I reassembled the system and put in FFIII but encountered the same issue two more times. Any suggestions on what the issue may be or the next step in troubleshooting? I'm not opposed to buying a new SNES (of course would prefer not to) but I'm not sure if the issue is with the system or the game. If it is the game, I'd want to touch base with the seller ASAP to see if I could return it. Thanks!

You said this happened to other snes games you have as well? If the pins look ok and are clean I would assume its the snes but I am no expert. Use brasso on the contacts of game cartridge with Q-tip until there is no dirt/tarnish left behind on q-tips. And why not just buy another snes even one that looks like hell and see if it has same issue. Maybe its something to do with the video output portion of your snes instead of the cartridge connector.

Wow, you still have an official SNES cleaning kit?!? Awesome!

I will agree that if multiple games are giving you a similar problem, then it's most likely your SNES. You can certainly use brasso to clean your games (I do), but the SNES was nowhere near as bad as the NES when it comes to that pin connector problem, so I would think if the pins on the game look good, then you need to start looking at your console. I would also recommend getting or borrowing another SNES and see how that works for you.

I think I had issues with my used copy of that game as well. My solution was to just play it on an emulator, then I eventually bought it again on the Wii.

Is there any particular reason you want to play it on the SNES as opposed to the Wii? It's only 8 bucks, and if you're not concerned with having a physical copy for a collection or anything, you might as well just see if you can get your money back for it. If cleaning the connectors doesn't work, the process of figuring out what's wrong and fixing it seems way more work than it's worth.

This is a game that deserves to be played on original hardware, it feels and looks better to me. Just a better experience on original hardware as long as you are using S-video or better on a crt.