In a nutshell: There’s a good chance you’ve heard that the habit of blowing into old Nintendo cartridges when they don’t work is just that: a habit that doesn’t actually fix the problem. A recent blog post on iFixit offers a good explanation of how the practice likely caught on, the inner workings of cartridge technology, and what users should really do to clean them.
Anyone old enough to have played console games before they were stored on optical discs has likely blown into a malfunctioning cartridge and possibly maintained the habit after hearing that it’s actually harmful. The correct way to clean old video games is slightly more complex.
For those too young to remember, the cartridges used for consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, or Sega Genesis are more elaborate than modern memory cards. Perhaps more similar to PC graphics cards, they contain full printed circuit boards with additional hardware that augment the console, like extra graphics chips or batteries for maintaining player progress.
The technology requires precise contact pins to function, so dust, moisture, or corrosion can cause the black screens or garbled graphics that are so familiar to NES users. If you ever successfully booted a cartridge after removing it, blowing on it, and reinserting it, the removal and reinsertion likely helped more than exhausting your lungs.
Systems like the NES’s Japanese counterpart, the Famicom, used pin connectors that were deliberately tightened so the friction of inserting them would wipe the contacts clean. However, the Western model’s ZIF design loosened the cartridge. The decision made switching out games easier but made them more likely to accumulate dust and other material over time.
Blowing might dislodge some dust and some claim that the moisture temporarily improves electrical contacts, but it can also eventually corrode the inside of the cartridge. A Q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol of at least 90 percent concentration should reliably fix a dirty cartridge. However, corrosion or especially stubborn grime might require opening the case with a screwdriver.
Nintendo used to sell cleaning kits for this purpose, but iFixit offers a similar package with brushes and a contact cleaning solution. If cleaning the contacts doesn’t work on any cartridges, the NES’s 72-pin connector might need to be realigned or replaced.
Image credit: iFixit
