Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Caleb]

Honestly the only thing that kills them is being in a house where people smoke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCLOxK6FpfA&feature=player_embedded

[Emaline]

And cat pee.

[LeeC]

intriguing.

[jhocking]

That is not at all what I expected. From the title I assumed this would be a rant about how many frikkin times you die on the third screen of Metal Gear.

[Alex C]

Yeah, I mean, I remember a youtube review series talking about how they suspect that the later levels in Ghosts and Goblins do not actually exist. I mean, why should the developers bother? You're not getting past the second one anyway.

[Caleb]

I have gotten some really beat up NES carts and they have ALWAYS worked.

[Emaline]

I worked at a game store where we took in old nes cartridges. A lot of times they were so god awfully disgustingly dirty that they didn't work. Animals and video games don't mix. If I can air-duster a whole freaking labrador retriever out of you console, something is dreadfully wrong.

[Caleb]

hahaha.  That is horrible.  Pet STUFF.

All cartridge based games get corrosion on their contacts but some contract clearer or something like Windex will clean that out really quickly.  I have cleaned some games that looked like they were kept in a bucket of used motor oil.

[Chesire Cat]

You cant really save a NES whose contacts have bent from years of use though.

Also, smoker's homes? Was there some previous conversation about smoke killing NES games that I missed?

[Emaline]

It just turns them colors.

[Caleb]

No a video game console or cartridge that is in a smokers home will not work as well.

You get all kinds of corrosion and gunk build up.  And it smells bad.

At least that has been my experience with used stuff.

[bicostp]

I generally use a few different steps to clean a cartridge, starting from the least aggressive to the most:

- Rubbing alcohol
- Pencil eraser
- gasoline/WD-40/carburetor cleaner/brake cleaner (whichever's handy)
- fine sandpaper

You cant really save a NES whose contacts have bent from years of use though.

Of course you can!. Bend the pins back into place, get a replacement cartridge connector (I'm pretty sure they still manufacture new ones), or you can build a new connector using two really old floppy cables if you're feeling ambitious. Replacing the cartridge connector itself is the easiest method. It's just a C-shaped piece of plastic, and the motherboard connector is basically another cartridge connector. Take the motherboard out, slip the old connector off, slip the new one on, reassemble.

Besides, most of the failures in the NES are because of the lockout chip, the problem isn't always the cartridge connector. If you disable it (simply cut one leg on the IC off the motherboard and short it to ground), your NES will be several times more reliable. "The blinkies" are caused by the lockout chip resetting the console because it can't talk to its counterpart in the cartridge properly.