I was once a proud owner of the NES Family Computer which was bought by dad during primary school days. Game cartridges are definitely not cheap, RM60.00 (equivalent to RM120 nowadays), but games in those days had high replayability and challenging.
On weekends, brother and I would ask parents' permission to play games ONLY after we finished schoolwork. If everything went well, we would then take out the console from a birthday cake box, set it all up and had some quality co-op action time. Those were the days, we spent hours and hours playing Mario, Contra, Ice Climbers, Soccer, Double Dragon etc. I still have the box and console back in hometown, will definitely take a photo next time.
After a few months of constant slotting the cartridge to the console pins, you might encounter cartridge fail reading or graphic glitch. According to the sales assistant at a local game shop in Fajar Supermarket, "Oh, it's because dust collected on the cartridge's pins" he said confidently. He then blew and shaked it a few times, put it back to the console slot *voila* it worked like a charm. And so it all began, whenever the console can't read the cartridge properly, we would follow these steps:
Step 01: Take out the cartridge
Step 02: Inhale air into your mouth
Step 03: Blow it straight to the cartridge's pins
Step 04: Give it a few weak shakes to make sure dirt drops out
Step 05: Slot it back to console
Step 06: Still not working?? Back to Step 01.
It's working so well that I didn't give it a second thought...until I read this
article.
TL;DR
Nintendo designed its NES connector using nickel pins bent into a position so that they’d give slightly when a cartridge was inserted, then spring back after it was removed. These pins became less springy after repeated use, which make it hard for them to firmly grasp the game cartridge’s connectors.
Myth busted and mind blown...
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