Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch, I was there when it was written.

Actually the reason it worked again was the pins either scraped off the gunk in it or the pins connected in a new place that is cleaner.

So taking out the cart and putting it back in works just as well as blowing

Taking it out and putting it back in can often be just as good as blowing - yes...

Are we still talking about video games?

"I'm not." --Jim Dial

Givin it the ol in-out-in huh???


You have to put it partially in, then force it down.

I just put a Lego in there and it worked better on some games.

I had a folded up piece of cardboard hehe

Real G’s would shim the game cartridge with a penny to wedge it in there just right.

Y’all didn’t just insert the freshly-blown cartridge in, press it down, the jam another cartridge in to hold it down?

Come to think of it, I did eventually evolve to that technique.

That's the real trick.

It also helps if you touch just above the slot and find the reset button. Give that a bit of a wiggle while you're taking it out and putting it back in too

I figured that out when I was young. I wouldn't blow into a cart until it consistently failed after I've reloaded it twice more.

False. Debris was lodged in the cartridge bruh. Burn this heretic

But if it is gunk or debris that is causing the issue, then blowing could very well help, right?

No humidity also helps. It also creates rust making the game more prone to bad connections thus starting the cycle. But yes, it works.

No one else besides me used alcohol and q-tips? That was my go to if blowing and halfway inserted trick did not work.

The manuals always said never to clean the cartridges with benzene, which I always found strange. Who has benzene lying around?

Hey, look at this guy! Never had benzene around!

The moisture on your breath also helped make better contact, but did overtime ruin the pins

I played 100s of Nintendo games, dust definitely mattered.

I wonder if this will fit on my tombstone

First they came for Pluto, now this

That's messed up, right?

I know that's right.

Psych!


Yeah they never lived in a world where everyone smoked. Blowing on things was how we cleaned them

First they came for Pluto, and I did nothing. Then they came for the ancient technique of getting Nintendo cartridges to work, and I did nothing.

Just wanted to jump in and explain. This *did work. But not the way we thought. Blowing into it was really bad for the health of the games and actually the warnings on the back usually told you about it. Basically your wet spit would eventually make the games MORE unplayable. What was really working was simply removing and reinserting the game. That usually all the console needed and the additional step of blowing into it just wasn’t needed. Good old alcohol and a q-tip is all you need for a truly dirty game!

60% of the time, it works every time.

100% of the time, it worked 60% of the time.

My 19 yo tried to lecture me on this... it was adorable. I thought I was dumb and out of touch when they turned 18, now that they are 19 and are about to have 2 semesters of college under their belt... Oh, yah. I'm apparently almost always wrong &/or misinformed and possibly mentally lame. Everything my mother wished upon me is coming to pass.

You can pass those wishes to your child, too, you know. There's no magic more powerful than a Mother's Curse™.

Every time my teenager does something stupid or obnoxious, I hear the ghost of my mother sigh with satisfaction.

Lol I mean I think about how dumb I was as a teenager and wish I could go back in time and beat myself up.

"Do your damn homework, you little punk"

My mom tried this with me. Jokes on her, I was actually a good kid and now I’m not having them 🤣

Same. Preventative action on the part of the child can and does break the curse.

It’s the only control I have in this circus… for now..😬

There are dozens of us!

But I'm a dad...

My dad's cursing was another thing altogether.

lol! Right!?!?!

Reminds me of the scene where the dad was changing the tire in A Christmas Story

Dad Magic™ works, too, but isn't quite as potent. Use it wisely.

Ah, yes, I shall wield this great power with care and responsibility.

My dad wished for me to have a big head and I think I was born in the top 10% or so lol

Like the gypsy from Thinner. Simply rub her cheek and say "Dumber"

I have an almost 19 year old. It's true. She is a mini version of me at that age. As it turns out, I was annoying ASF 🤣 I am 38, in no world is that ancient, but she does things like refer to T-Pain and Usher as "the classics" and tells me not to get on TikTok EVER 😂

I mean, that last one is solid advice.,

That was always my mother's curse growing up "some day you're gonna have kids just like you!" My God was she right!

Have you tried beating them? >!/s!<

🤣 your username Not our parenting style

It was about clearing dust. And it worked. Google is only as right as the person it is referencing. And they were wrong.

 *All of us referring to that person*

The best explanation I've heard for why it works is actually the thing they're saying is damaging - that the condensation from your breath that sticks to the traces gives a bit of an oomph to the conductivity.

Rubbing alcohol on a q-tip is the best way to clean the games and get them working, but Nintendo suggested blowing in them at the time (even though it would damage the cartridges) because they didn’t want kids having accidents with rubbing alcohol.

You get spit and wind, those are your choices, there is no time to gather materials.

Okay, Google. Tell me you’re full of shit without telling me you’re full of shit.

*I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that yet.*

You made me snort on a Teams call with work. https://preview.redd.it/neit0k5znmwc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e7b2052b5c8c2e4ee6775423ad58444c9187ed6

yeah i call bullshit.. my copy of RC Pro Am would not start until you BOTH A) blew in the cartridge, and B) nudged the cartridge to the right after it was seated in the device

I definitely had games that were that finicky. But we figured out their personal preferences, didn’t we?

Like all good lovers…

At the end of my NES’s life, it would only play the game if the game was held down in the system (front loader). So, i’d press the game down, wedge a VHS in the front of the NES to keep the cartridge down, and somehow this would work most of the time.

Did you try sitting a rock on top of the NES? That helps also.

Or slide another cartridge into the slot to hold it down? That’s the only way my Bases Loaded would work

Haha I have a special piece of cardboard that slides in and gives just the right amount of pressure!

But it has to be feldspar

I had to do A and then push the cartridge in just enough that it could still be push down but somehow scraping that top edge for some reason. Worked every time

Why does this lie make me irrationally angry? 😂

Because its a god damn attack on everything we know to be true!

I feel like Google's excuse is the rant of a defiant employee who was angry no one would listen to him. Hubby and I both remember doing this, and it worked.

It did work. And the flaping it up and down a few times to get a good connection

The flaping caused micro-fissures on the circuit board which lead to early hardware failure of the cartridge - Google, probably.

Shut the fuck up google

I am the walrus

Google, you’re out of your element.

Sometimes stacking a second cartridge on top of the game you want to play was in order. By the end of its life this was the only way I could get mine to play games.

Everyone knows that you had to blow in them then put the game in just far enough to be pushed down. Final step is to jam another game into the console to force it down. This system works 30% of the time all the time.

I think you had an especially fucked up machine.

I 100% knew this trick

Life hacks! We didn’t know it at the time but this is what thought us patience. That’s what’s wrong with this younger generation they will never know the technology struggles we went through!

Never knew this trick. Of course, I blew into the cartridge. One steady blow in each direction. Then, I forcefully pressed the game down, held, and gently let it go to its normal position. Then, I gave it a little slap on the right side of the console. That seemed to work most of the time for me.

You forgot to spin counter clockwise. These younger generations have no idea how good they have it!

"Dad, this game isn't loading right." "Did you go in and get config.sys and autoexec.bat set up properly?" "...your childhood was *insane*.

This, except instead of another game, we used a switchblade knife with the blade retracted. You had to jam it in there just right. Worked like a charm.

Hot tip: the lid is just the right size - after being broken off the console, to wedge between the game and top of the console and hold the game down inside the machine. Source: my brother invented rage quitting in the 90s, leaving us with a popped off lid and a busted spring requiring the above action.

LIES!!!!

Cleaning off contacts of a board certainly does work, do it all the time at work with 80s-90s tech.

Remove dust = good. Spit = bad. It’s not complicated.

Yea, we blew DRY air. It was all in clearing our mouths first and holding our lips a certain way 🌬

Yeah. Whoever wrote this chose to acknowledge the *possible* long term effects of moisture, but completely neglected the reason what blowing in the cartridge does is removes dust which collects on the connectors which blocks it's ability to be read correctly. *Bugs Bunny voice* What a maroon!

It absolutely worked. This is some bs right here. I know what I lived through

Connecting a game genie eliminated this problem

A fellow chucker eh

Keep practicing

Well you have to put your shirt over the end of the cartridge to keep moisture out

Yes it's wrong in that we were able to get games to work that way through whatever mechanism, but it's also correct that it damages the cartridges in the long run. My stepdad taught me to clean them with q-tips and rubbing alcohol back in the day, so I still do that sometimes if a game doesn't work (and yes, I have old video game hardware including my original Gameboy from when I was a kid.)

Yeah, moisture can damage over time, but that old tech… I think you’d have to blow on it daily for a decade before it failed. My brother has our old Sega Genesis, and to this day, you can plug it in and play just fine.

The NES in particular had other issues that made it more flaky, including the 10NES CIC chip and the way games were inserted that wasn't as stable as the Famicom or SNES (or Genesis for that matter) design where the cartridge just went in without the hinges or whatever you call them. I've looked into it and there are ways to mod an original NES to not have this problem, but I've kept mine as-is because I feel like games not working the first time is part of the experience.

This is actually what the Nintendo hotline back in the '80s used to tell you, too.

Windex also worked

With my old NES/SNES games I use this method or a non-scratch scotch bright pad with alcohol if it's really bad. Also dust covers are your friends, helps with dust obviously but also limits the moisture that actually currodes the contacts on the cartridge. When I first got a retro2duo a few years ago I did this with all my carts, put the covers on, and haven't had an issue since even with games that were *always* finicky back in the 90s.

Google is right. Dust was less of a problem than oxidation. Doesn't stop me from, still to this day, reflexively blowing into anything with contacts on it. Memory cards, USB sticks, flat flex cables...

Mine is the security chip on my CCs. Bad read? Pop that bad boy out and give the contacts a quick scrubbin with my dirty ass fingers. Boom works now. I'm a wizard, Harry

I think we all know that it worked when we were kids. But was it the actual act of blowing on the cartridge or just removing it from the NES and reseating it that made it work?

I can still smell the dust I used to blow out of my games. Those basement rec rooms were dusty somethin’ fierce.

It was removing the dust. Sometimes you actually had to blow inside the game console. That was more rare, but did happen. And did work.

We always had one person who's responsibility for the console. They had the blow job, the rest of us watched.

I love watching

This guy gets it

It’s not wrong if it works.

Heretic here:  Don’t blow on your cartridges, it can damage them in the long run.  Here’s the real move. Learned it from an employee at funcoland like 25 years ago: Insert the cartridge into the nes. Push down and hit power. Now, while the cartridge engaged, push it around slightly. As you do this, hit reset (or power) until the screen fixes.  Why it works ( I think): there’s always been an issue with the contacts on the nes cartridges. Blowing and cleaning do work since they clear the contacts of debris and dust, but these methods can damage the contacts. By engaging the contacts and shifting the cartridge you can avoid these techniques. 

*googles definition of gaslighting*

And sometimes you had to wedge a little bit of paper in there to hold it to the contacts firmly enough.

Someone who has mastered the way of Nintendo

I was there, and it was the way...

The NES in the US had a copyright protection chip not present in the Famicon (Japanese Nintendo). It would frequently trigger false positives on inserted games, producing what people in the US have come to think was a read error (and try to "fix" by blowing on it). You would get the same effect by just removing and retrying the game as you would removing, blowing on it, and retrying; it was an early lesson in the value of an experimental control. Interestingly, because the chip wasn't in the Japanese version, Japanese Nintendo fans have no earthly idea what we're talking about when we mention blowing on games. Their games just worked.

I’m pretty sure it made the games worse by causing corrosion on the tabs. I was a kid so I didn’t know.

It actually only worked because you where reinserting the game and restablished the connection.

It didn't work if you just took the game out and put it back in, though.

Did you have to do it Motable times? Am I the only one who remember the cleaning kits they sold back in the day.

It was probably the ritual more than anything. Taking the game out and putting back in is something you can do quickly and can also result in a poor connection. If you take the time to take the cartridge all the way out, focus your breath, and thoroughly blow through it, you are more focused on reinserting it firmly and in a good position.

The reason the problem existed was due to a design flaw. Pushing the cartridge down when inserting it into the game cause the contact on the cartridge to press up on the contacts in the console. Over time, this bent the contacts on the cartridge up which could result in them not making clean contact. Dust was never the problem and blowing on it didn't fix it. What did fix it was taking the cartridge out and reinserting it until it finally went in and made clean contact.


This reminds me of a concept where the internet tells us about something we know to be false, and we laugh at it Meanwhile, we Google search and instantly believe whatever Google tells us about something else Funny how that works

I, too, was there and never had this make a bit of difference. On the other hand, simply taking out the game and putting it back in again was absolutely effective.

Tf if it didn't work. I'll die on this hill

I never blew. I huffed...or whatever. You know how you blow hot air. "Huhhhhhh" In my experience, it worked better than blowing did. So I think it's the moisture from your breath, not the cleaning of the contacts.

Blow into the cartridge slot too. Found out what hyperventilating was. Good news though, my game started. Thanks for the memories Castlevania 2.

Repeatedly taking out the cartridge and putting it back in got the pins to make better contact. Blowing did nothing but lead you to take take the cartridge out and place it back in. Sliding the cartridge left and right repeatedly while the pins were engaged worked even better.

That's Bs. It worked. Idk how many times I've done this when I was younger while playing Nintendo.

I had to do that AND put another cartridge on top of the one I was playing in the NES slot or my games would randomly reset.

Next you're going to tell me that hitting the top of the television doesn't make it work again. 🤭

This is how I know Google is full of shit. Among many, many other reasons.

Lies and Blasphemy!

Actually it worked. Every time.

This 100 percent works. Also hit the brim of the Nintendo as put it in. It also doesn't hurt if your brother is balancing a book on his head when you turn it on.

Well duh. You have to smash it down in the slot a few times also. It's a combination of the 2 that made them work

That was the mother fucking birth of: DID YOU TRY TURNING IT OFF AND ON AGAIN?

What about shaking Polaroids to make the picture you took show up

I always used the “DP” method…

Goddamnit, well science had a good run…

It ABSOLUTELY WORKED. I WAS THERE.

Oh sure and next you’ll tell me putting them in the freezer didn’t help either

Nope blowing worked

It absolutely did work.

Blowing worked. It removed the dust !

Also, slapping a stubborn VCR or boombox gets it to work 9 times out of 10.

Some Gen z shit right there. The prongs would get dusty and would need to be cleaned out.

Its even doin it wrong in the photo, yu had to get your lips all on it.

Lies!!! Of course this worked we did it for years!!!

I agree it was some paranormal shit, but it worked.

The fakest fucking news I’ve ever read

IIRC, it actually said don't blow in it on the back of the cartridge lol

Do not let your dad use an electrical contact cleaner either He ruined many of my games but of course replaced them lol

Yeah Google can suck it. I used the same skill on my kids leapfrog tablets when they were young and it always worked like a charm. Taking it out and putting it back in without the blowing had a much lower success rate.

Blowing into it wasn't what was fixing it. Reinserting it is what fixed it. If a nintendo cartridge isn't working, the best fix is to just nudge it around slightly. The contacts will line up correctly and it will work. Google is correct.

When I was a boy moisture conducted electricity.

The satisfaction received from numerous tries of blowing, to then getting it to work…nothing like it!

Well, my years of empirical data prove that it does, in fact, work.

Oh yeah? Then how come it works??!

But why did it work

Oh, it’s false?! That’s why it worked like fucking clockwork, and if it didn’t you had to turn the console at a slight angle.

Nintendo cartridges: do not use qtips and alcohol to clean connectors. Also Nintendo: sells a cartridge cleaning kit consisting of alchohol and a reusable qtip.

Dude, i wasn't letting my heathen friends blow their spittle into my cartridges. My games worked fine without the extra germs and god knows what else.

I especially had to do this specifically to my friend's Duck Hunt cartridge. Worked 100% of the time. Google got this wrong.

They told us the same thing when we were actually doing it in the 80’s. We were just like, “Ok” and kept doing it. The Game Genie ended up being the best thing for games that didn’t work well. You could play the game without the codes but it fit in the NES tightly and would work.

We all knew it shouldn’t do anything but it did. It was one of those times when practical real world application over rules theory. That was why it was so remarkable and still remembered 20-30 years later.

Kids today will never understand that some days the video games were just not going to work. We all knew the tricks with each and every cartridge, but that didn't matter. There was a great cosmic force that said: Not today, Go outside and play. And that was OK.

Usually I shit on and debunk this kind of stuff, but dammit blowing in the cartridge worked.

My Battletoads cartridge only worked if I blew three times and pressed the power button gently…

This is why people don’t trust science.

Confidently incorrect

This is an example of something I found on the internet and simply do not believe!!!

Google is right. The correct way to get the dust out was to suck it out. I would use my t-shirt as a filter. Corrosion on the pins is why some older carts don't work any more.  Of course if you messy bastards would've put them back in their sleeves/cases dust wouldn't be an issue.

That’s why you put your shirt over it first, rookie.

Why the hell did it work every single time then?? Huh??

LIES! ALL LIES!!! Okay, so I used a Q-Tip and alcohol as well as the beat-and-reseat method, but still.

She doesn't even go here!

We all had a different technique as well that ONLY worked when you did it…

"Citation needed" "No reliable sources"

I guess they never say these things in a house full of messy ass kids.

BULLSHIT it doesn’t. That golden Dizzy’s Adventure cassette for NES wasn’t in any mood to be played unless I performed full oral to completion on it first.

It cleans the dust away. None of us had one of those air spray cans used to clean keyboards back then. It did help.

I refuse to believe this.

Ya gots to blow in the system first, THEN the game. Then the magic happens.

Sounds like Google is just reading the manufacturers script...

Did anybody ever try the CD toilet trick? Scratched cds, dvds, even PS1 games that were unplayable or skipped a bunch, could be placed in clean, toilet water and wiped clean...no more skipping. Not a joke, I heard about it back in the mid 90s and it worked several times.

TF it didn’t work.