In the 1980s, everyone who owned a Nintendo Entertainment System knew the only way to fix a faulty game was to eject it, hold it to your lips, and blow on it. If it didn’t work after that, you simply repeated the process, with more force, until it finally worked. This was not only wrong but it was super gross, because you basically just sprayed spit particles all over your copy of Super Mario Bros. 3.
On top of being unhygienic, your kid-spit also probably contributed to corrosion on your cart’s contacts, and if your mouth was particularly juicy, a glob of nasty saliva could actually short some of the contacts, and that’s bad.
But what’s the real solution to this very real problem? Well, there are two that immediately spring to mind: one of which will cost you nothing but your time, and the other will cost you like $20 maybe? Depends. Oh, it also costs time. So time plus $20 for that second one.
But what’s the real solution to this very real problem?
Let’s take a look at how, exactly, your NES is able to entice the game to emerge from the cart. You might think there are ghosts inside, and the NES is a conduit for their spirits. It is simply impossible for me to prove there aren’t ghosts inside every video game cartridge, so to be safe, just assume your game collection is very haunted. However, there is science behind how your cartridge gets its code inside your game, although I guess technically it’s engineering, which is basically applied science. But I’m neither a scientist, nor an engineer, and as previously discussed I know very little about the spirit realm, but I’m going to do my best to explain the very simple theory behind how your game goes from your cart, to inside your NES, and then up on your screen.
In electrical work, the kind that concerns itself with outlets and wiring and the like, the most important requirement is that all connections be two things: electrically and mechanically sound. In other words, you could hypothetically just lay two bare wires across one another and have them conduct electricity, but a slight breeze or mouse whisper could separate them, breaking the circuit. In modern wiring, wires are twisted together snugly and then a wirenut is twisted over the top. This makes the wires play nicely together… forever. Electrically and mechanically sound.
With your NES cart, or pretty much any video game cartridge, the requirement isn’t there for a permanent, powerful connection. In fact that’s kind of the point. But you also don’t want your cartridges to just flop around inside the machine, so a balance has to be struck. The springiness of the NES’ 72-pin connector is such that you can slide in your cartridge without too much effort and have the pins give it just a nice little squeeze, a little electronic hug. The metal contacts of the connector and the contacts of the cartridge then create a beautiful pairing that allows the free movement of electrons from one to the other. It’s electrically sound and mechanically sound-enough.
But therein lies the problem. You see, the need to rely on that “springiness” to make a good connection to the cartridge contacts means given enough use, it wears out JUST enough to make it a real hassle. The 72-pin connector needs to make full contact with the cartridge’s contacts in order to work. The rituals we used to do as kids, like blowing on the cartridge, worked sometimes because the fail-state of the 72-pin connector wasn’t total. You might put the cart back in, all gross with spit, at a slightly different angle and that angle is enough to make contact.
“Why not just make the 72-pin connector grip harder, then?” That’s a good question. Without knowing for sure, I would imagine the designers of the original NES hardware probably didn’t expect man-children like me to use their products 30 years later, but it doesn’t take 30 years for the problems to start to arise. If the 72-pin connector’s grip were more forceful, the trade-off would be… well, ask anyone who had a first-generation Hyperkin Retron5 how terrifying it was to try to remove a cart from its vice-like grips. On top of that, every time you insert and eject a cartridge, you’re kind of ruining it. I mean, at basically a microscopic scale, sure, but it’s a destructive process nonetheless. That metal-on-metal contact, coupled with pulling the cart in and out, removes just the littlest bit of metal from the contacts and the connector. Just the smallest amount, you won’t even notice, probably in a lifetime. But if the connector had more force, the metal-on-metal scraping would be worse and perhaps even visible on the contacts after just a few use cycles. Again, looking at you, first gen Retron5.
That metal-on-metal contact, coupled with pulling the cart in and out, removes just the littlest bit of metal from the contacts and the connector.
So, to sum it up: the NES, and pretty much every other cartridge-based system, relies on an electrically sound contact between pieces of metal, which in the case of the NES is done through the 72-pin connector. That connector’s ability to grip weakens over time, which leads to bad connections between the NES and the game cartridge, which leads to that annoying blinking red light and things like a flashing screen or random characters on the screen instead of sprites.
I should quickly point out, there are plenty of other things that can cause NES failure. Corroded contacts on the game or the 72-pin connector, issues with the kind-of annoying spring-loaded mechanism inside the NES not lining up correctly, corrosion on the board of the NES or the game. There are lots of reasons why your system might not work, but the biggest culprit of all is that 72-pin connector. Thankfully, it’s really easy to fix. In fact, I’ve already made a video to show you how, as well as show you a little trick to get a little extra use out of an old connector that involves a pot of boiling water and some patience. It’s at the top of this column! And it’s a delight.
Beyond blowing on carts, did you have any NES rituals you would undertake to try and get them to work? Let me know in the comments.
Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.
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