Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?

As a wee lad in the last millennium I was an authorized Nintendo repairman.<p>Blowing on the cart sometimes worked, if there was errant dust or fluff in the way. But in the long run the salty moist air would cause a corrosive layer of gunk on the contacts. Normal procedure was to open each cart and clean them with a good eraser then an alcohol wash.<p>The bigger problem was bad design in the original NES. The cart plugged into a component that looked like a harmonica and then pressed downwards, levering against a pretty heavy spring. This perpendicular stress caused the contacts to break, first causing contact flakiness, then failure. The SuperNES and GameBoy fixed this problem with a vertical insertion that carried over into the N64 and others.

Or if you're really brave you could just replace the 72-pin reader:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-NES-Cartridge-Slot-Replacement/dp/B004FO6PZG" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-NES-Cartridge-Slot-Replacemen...</a><p><a href="https://nuxx.net/wiki/NES_72-Pin_Edge_Connector_Replacement" rel="nofollow">https://nuxx.net/wiki/NES_72-Pin_Edge_Connector_Replacement</a><p>I did it on mine in college -- and then I did it for my suite-mate after he noticed that I never had any problems with my NES -- and then I did it for everyone on my floor who had an NES... :) Works like brand new.

I was an kid pre-NES, and got an old system at a yard sale for my kids. I quickly learned that I could reseat it 20 times, clean it with alcohol, pencil eraser, whatever sane tactic, none of them worked as often as blowing into the cartridge.<p>I had never heard of blowing into the cartridge before. I didn't get the technique from other kids, and I had never had to do it with Atari, Intellivision, C64, or any other system. I learned it out of desperation, and it worked. I don't care what scientific evidence or common sense points to the contrary, it worked.

I obviously havent matured very much because the 10 year old in me wants to say "nah-ah blowing works every time"<p>Perhaps I was kidding myself all those years but I swear the games would work after blowing on them. Oh well not the first time Ive found a fundamental of life was all a lie (and yes the trick to getting Nintendo games to work was a fundamental life skill back then)

What always worked for me was inserting a 3x2 Lego piece, oriented vertically, between the cartridge and the top of the NES container. This pushed down the game by about 3-4mm. This trick was common knowledge in the neighborhood where I lived during the mid 80s.

So I used to pull out Unibus cards from the PDP-11 and rub the contacts with a pencil eraser to get the corrosion off them. HP machines of course had literally gold plated connectors which did not corrode pretty much ever.

The trick that always worked for me was to insert the cartridge and then pull it out just enough to where the near edge of the cartridge would just barely scrape against the console as it was pushed down. This was far more effective than blowing on the cartridge.

It was a revelation when I decided to try actually cleaning the contacts on a NES. The results of a little alcohol and a brush made of folded notebook paper earned me the reputation of a magician in my circle of friends.

The "Placebo Effect" isn't "something tricking you into thinking it works" - it's the fact that <i>having</i> a belief that something works produces better outcomes. I doubt that the mental state of the child has any detectable or consistent effect on the function of the console.

This is the second report I've read that says that it doesn't help. But there's something these reports are missing, because the simple fact is that it DID work. I've personally proven the hypothesis a hundred times in my childhood: (re)insert cartridge X times -- doesn't work -- blow -- works. It was extremely rare that blowing did nothing in my experience, and the solution in those cases? blow harder.

After reading the sidebar about the kid who licked his cartridges, I completely forgot about the original article.

I always found that if blowing no longer worked, that I could plug it into the Game Genie loader and it would usually work. I suspect because the fit into the Genie was much tighter and the pins were less worn or corroded.

The Game Genie is a mini cartridge that attaches to a game cart (to apply cheats/mods through a code-entry screen). This combo is then inserted into the NES, Game Genie-first. The combo is too long to be pushed down, and the NES door remains open while playing.<p>I never understood why you don't need to push "down" the Game Genie; a bare cart would never function unless pushed down...<p>Nevertheless, every game I had that would not work in the NES would work just fine with the Game Genie attached (and you can always choose to enter zero cheat codes). The Game Genie seemed to make everything a bit tighter. When inserted into the NES, there isn't much wiggle room, if I recall.<p>edit: Wikipedia says, "Therefore, the Game Genie was designed in such a way that it did not need to be depressed in order to start the game. This design put even more stress on the ZIF socket than standard game insertion, bending pins and eventually causing units to be unplayable without the Game Genie present." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie</a>

The trick is to filter the cartridge opening with your shirt THEN blow into it.

I'm surprised seeing those photos of the game boards outside their cartridges. Not only are they <i>much</i> smaller than the cartridge, but they are really just some memory and the lock-out chip!

I used to blow in them, but I found that the double cartridge technique (putting two in at a time causing the pins to press harder) worked a lot better. Sometimes if things were really bad a 'snap-in' technique would work. To perform this technique you insert the cartridge partially and then apply downward pressure causing the cartridge to forcefully jump into the slot. This was likely very bad for the system :)

I don't think I ever blew into my NES cartridges, but I remember taking them out, giving them a gentle shake with the connector end pointing down, and putting them back in. I expect doing this was as much a placebo as blowing (it's not as if there were chip crumbs stuck in there), but it made me feel like I was doing something productive. :/

I had a religious friend that would force us all to hold hands and say a prayer. It worked half the time too.

Is it possible the moisture caused by blowing into the cartridge allowed for better electric conductivity?

We all thought it worked :) All of my friends with NES growing up encountered the same problems overtime. It was clearly a design problem as described in the article. The SNES was so well designed, I still use it to this day (almost 20 years later).

Holy crap, everyone is wrong. I didn't think I'd see this day on HN.<p>The reason people resorted to blowing in the cartridges is because of the CIC chip. The so-called "Lock-Out" chip on the NES is responsible for the Blinking power button and games not working.<p>"Sometimes," I hear some of you say, "You'd take the game out, put it back in, and it'd sometimes work. Why?" Well, imaginary question-asker, because the a faulty CIC will work sporadically. if the code passes the CIC check, it continues without issue. if the CIC fails halfway through your game, your game doesn't stop working. If you power cycled the system, then you'd notice the CIC failure. Blowing on the cartridge worked for the same reason doing 200 pushups will make water boil.<p>Nesdev.org has a decent amount of information about this chip on their wiki, if anyone's interested.<p>TL;DR - clip two pins on the CIC chip, never blow in a NES cartridge again.

In my experience, DS cartridges are far worse than NES cartridges for this issue. I don't know how they corrode the way they do, but I've sent my carts to Nintendo numerous times for replacement.

What a stupid article. You're supposed to <i>cough</i> into the cartridge, not blow in it. Then you insert the cartridge, slap the system's sides twice, and power on

I remember using rubbing alcohol on a q-tip against both sides of the connector. That seemed to work well when blowing on it and rubbing it with your shirt didn't.

That "experiment" tested whether excessive blowing damages a working cartridge, not whether target blowing fixes a damaged cartridge.

What about the Sega Master System ? I remember blowing my cartridges (also, I'm not in the US), but I may be confusing.

I thought blowing into the NES cartridge flipped the cosmic bits inside so that it may be played once more?

Article had a way too low signal/noise ratio. Way too verbose.

I got a NES a few days ago with some games. Yes, blowing into the cartridge works just as it always has. It can take 10 tries without blowing without getting any video/audio, but blowing another game once or twice and the game is on.