How did you make your NES games work?


The Infamous NES  

70 members have voted

  1. 1. How did you make your games work?

    • Blow in the cartridge
      47
    • Tap the NES on specific places
      0
    • Force the cartridge down and adjust it once its inside
      8
    • Other (Specify)
      9
    • WTF are you talking about? My NES always worked on the first try!
      6


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Hello fellow NES owners and players. We all know what kind of a system the NES was. some very fun and classic games but almost everytime, getting a game to work was a game of itself. The most common way was blowing in the cartridge (gotta love those "blow me" nintendo shirts!) but I've heard of all sorts of tricks unique tricks like forcing it down twice or not closing that door that would always end up break and fall appart.

What was your trick to make your NES games work!

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All the above, but even now it will not play games without the gamegenie, I'm prettty sure the genie stretched the connectors, so now the game swon't make a solid connection in the socket. But it doesn't matter, with the game genie it boots every game nearly the first time (the exceptions I will use the good old blow the cartridge technique)

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Blow on the game from side to side and if that didn't work, I would push the game down in the slot with the edge of the game hitting the front. Hard to explain I guess. Usually that worked though...not sure why.

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Blow on the game from side to side and if that didn't work, I would push the game down in the slot with the edge of the game hitting the front. Hard to explain I guess. Usually that worked though...not sure why.

Same thing I used to do. I used a lighter to jam the cartridge down.

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I used to blow on the cartridges till my cousin showed me the jamming trick.

you slide the cartridge in just enough so that it barely passes the front edge of the unit and force it down.

Powered everytime after that.

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Blowing in the cartridge ruins them and your system. The reason it works is the moisture from your breath causes it to make contact, but that moisture also causes them to corrode.

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^ yeah, but I was just a lil kid, and it WORKED! that's all that mattered to me :shiftyninja:

Also tried the upside down trick, I forgot all about having to do that.

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I snipped the pin on the security IC so I never got the red flashing on off screen...then I took a straightened out paper clip and bent each of the contacts on the zif socket out more so they made a good contact with the cartridge. After that, never had a single hiccup, everything worked.

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Blowing in the cartridge ruins them and your system. The reason it works is the moisture from your breath causes it to make contact, but that moisture also causes them to corrode.

And yet, all my NES games still work.

Score!

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The problem isn't the slot on the cartridge, it's the connector in the system. The original NES used copper connector pins, which oxidized after so many years, making good contact between the connector and the cartridge nigh impossible. Also, the pins acted like springs, and after a while, they'd fail to return to their extended position, failing to make solid contact with the cartridge.

Two years ago I went on eBay and bought a new gold plated connector for a few bucks, installed it, and all my games work flawlessly, like a brand new console.

Ravensworth is right. Blowing on the cartridge doesn't remove dirt, it adds moisture, which helps make the necessary contact. However, it only speeds the corrosion of both the cartridge and the connector in the console. That's also why licking the cartridge slot also works, as Ruiz noted.

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Should've been multiple choice, or an All of the above, because my three brothers and I sure did everything we could.

:laugh: :laugh: I never heard of the licking trick

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My tools of the trade: 1 Q-tip, 1 bottle of rubbing alcohol, 1 NES game that doesn't want to work.

I'd first have one end of the Q-tip soak in rubbing alcohol. Then I'd use that to scrub the connectors on the NES cartridge until they glistened (and smelled) like alcohol. I'd then use the dry end of the Q-tip to carefully dry off the tip of the connector so that the sides were still somewhat wet but not to the point where it's dripping. I put the cartridge in and BAM! it works without a hitch!

However, one of my tech-savvy friends who's an electrical engineer told me that by using rubbing alcohol on the NES cartridge, I'm slowly degrading the copper connectors (or something like that) and that if I keep doing that the console will ultimately never take games again. I never followed up on this, but I bet it's true cuz he's very smart. Nevertheless, I'm still cleaning my games that way and my NES (the original boxy grey one with the front-loader, not that ugly top-loading "new" one) still works after over 20 years of use and abuse! :D

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My tools of the trade: 1 Q-tip, 1 bottle of rubbing alcohol, 1 NES game that doesn't want to work.

I'd first have one end of the Q-tip soak in rubbing alcohol. Then I'd use that to scrub the connectors on the NES cartridge until they glistened (and smelled) like alcohol. I'd then use the dry end of the Q-tip to carefully dry off the tip of the connector so that the sides were still somewhat wet but not to the point where it's dripping. I put the cartridge in and BAM! it works without a hitch!

However, one of my tech-savvy friends who's an electrical engineer told me that by using rubbing alcohol on the NES cartridge, I'm slowly degrading the copper connectors (or something like that) and that if I keep doing that the console will ultimately never take games again. I never followed up on this, but I bet it's true cuz he's very smart. Nevertheless, I'm still cleaning my games that way and my NES (the original boxy grey one with the front-loader, not that ugly top-loading "new" one) still works after over 20 years of use and abuse! :D

+1

Although now, all I have to do to play my nintendo games is turn on my computer and boot up JNES. Life is sweet.

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All the above. BUT, the most effective for me was stuffing another cartidge ontop of the one already inserted.

And if that failed, the last resort was a q-tip dipped in alcohol and cleaned the tape. (Yes any olskooler will tell you we called'em 'tapes' :p) Worked everytime.

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O this thread is awsome!

My bros. and I would blow into the cartridge and into the console until our faces were blue, then we would attempt to start up a game and see if it worked or not.

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