Many gamers are quite nostalgic about the old Nintendo system. I know I am. Blowing in the cartrige to make the thing work is something everybody knows about and nearly everybody has done (even my parents did it and they are now in their 50's). It's like a time honored tradition. A right of passage. But I got to thinking of it and well....I can't for the life of me understand why the hell it worked. It boggles my mind. I recently had the opportunity to play on a NES recently and I had to use this famous technique numerous times and it was the ONLY thing that worked. I don't get it! Somebody explain it please....

The popular folk explanation is that it disperses dust on the connecting pins.

As for if this is true or not, hell if I know.

Heres my hypothosis....

Blowing in the cartridge causes tiny molocules of spit to land on the connector pins. Those molocules of spit help transfer the electricity thats needed to run the cartridge.

But thats just a guess. It is also a good reason why you either shouldnt blow in cartridges because the spit can cause mold to grow. Or if you insist in blowing in them, then clean them regularly.

What works even better, is moving the cart from side to side while it's in all the way. It works WAY better in fact.

*insert picture of "Blow Me *picture of NES Cartridge*" T-shirt here*

Heh silly NES/SNES. I can honestly say I've never played one of those things and never understood why people liked 'em.

I'm an old Amiga user though so had access to far better games.

http://www.uncrate.com/men/style/tee...irt-002634.php

Do I get some sort of award for beating Toprem at the internets?


It's going to hurt isn't it?

I lost the picture of it that I had and I had no idea where it came from. Googling for t-shirts turned up way too many sites so I didnt look through them.

The only thing that I found that works 99% of the time was to insert the cart until it would just barely fit. The outer edge should scrape up against the bottom of the loading bay when the cart was pushed down.

Darth is indeed correct, wedging the game in with something or sliding it around once it was already in always > blowing on it.

We used to push and pull the cartridge in and out of the slot, try turning on the system to see if it booted up, retry until it finally worked. Cleaning kits really didn't help much, unless the contacts really were scrunged up.

When I was a kid I'd hit mine until it worked.

Suprisingly, that only worked for a limited time.

I also found that putting it in and then hitting reset while the power button was flashing on and off worked pretty well.

Rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip worked a lot better, even though they said never to use cleansers on it.

Blowing in the game didn't work, in fact it could only hurt your games. Unless your Nintendo spent its life in grandma's attic or you played it in your backyard, there was virtually no amount of dust that could get on the connecting pins that you would need to blow off. What worked was the constant insertion and removal of the game until you made the connecting pins fit properly to the harness.

This is also how you make babies.

Spoiler tag that crap, wtf.

Anyone try the Microwave oven trick?

Another one!

Amiga 500, With the Upgraded Half Meg of Ram. Boy, my friends were envious!

Heh awesome. I had an Amiga 500 as well. Then I sold it to get my first car ('79 Datsun 280zx) and eventually bought an Amiga 1000. Then I traded that for an Amiga 3000. I tell you what, the Amiga was quite awesome and its multitasking way back in 1985 kicked the hell out of everything for many years to come.

We usually blew in it, and then bounced it up and down in the tray for about 5 or 6 times and then it usually worked. hehe, there should be a video of all the different techniques used to get the NES goin.

Blowing into the cartridge doesn't really work although I did it too as a kid.

This also worked best with 1st generation Sega games.

You're saying that like everyone didn't do it.

Monks for life.

blowing on the cart was to remove dust, trust me, where i live you have very real dust build up over 1 night, its a dust bowl around here, so if you have the door or a window open, you had to blow the dust off of (and out of) the cart. And you allways tryed to keep the spit to a minimum. After that you wigled the cart around to get it to conect.
the best of both worlds.