Back when CDs were still uncommon and digital downloads are hard to come by, gamers would buy game cartridges for their portable game consoles, mostly from Nintendo and the company's wide range of consoles from the Nintendo Entertainment Systems, SNES, and the Nintendo 64. Back then, people had one way of troubleshooting cartridges that don't start: blowing on the cartridges.
Blowing on game cartridges is a common "quick fix" for older game consoles.
Gaming Myth: Blowing on Cartridges
People often did it to blow out any dust that gamers believe was preventing the games to work properly, but it turns out that the quick-fix didn't do anything, as per GeekWire.
Before anything else, Nintendo game consoles back then used game cartridges, or simply known as carts, which are removable memory cards that contain the games.
Carts are then inserted into consoles to play games, much like what we do with disks and the smaller cartridges we have nowadays for certain portable gaming consoles.
If things go wrong, such as the console not reading the game or the game is glitching or blinking, it's often a problem between the system and the cart.
So, why did it seem to work when we're blowing on the cartridges that freeze or don't play?
It turns out that the secret was much simpler than blowing the dust off our favorite games, and instead, what actually helped was removing the cartridge from the console and putting it back again--so blowing never really did anything to help, according to the PBS Digital Studios show "It's OK to be Smart" that is available on YouTube.
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It's More Damaging than Helpful
What's more, blowing on the cartridges may actually cause damage to the games.
On a support page for the Nintendo NES game, the company specifically said to "not blow into your Game Paks or systems."
Based on what the gaming giant said, the moisture from our breaths could cause pin connectors to corrode and get contaminated.
Moreover, Chris Higgins from Mental Floss had written an article about the whole blowing-on-game-cartridges myth, saying that everything might have been nothing but "pure placebo."
"My money is on the blowing thing being a pure placebo, offering the user just another chance at getting a good connection," Higgins wrote in the article. "The problems with Nintendo's connector system are well-documented, and most of them are mechanical - they just wore out faster than expected."
The Good Old Days
So, that's everything with this long-believed gaming myth--the "fix" had nothing to do with the games playing, although the practice might have been long gone, especially as cartridges and portable Nintendo consoles have become rather rare these days, where everything is about disks and digital downloads.
These days troubleshoots tend to be more detailed than simply removing and putting back games and require a little more understanding of the tech side.
Fortunately, most issues with most consoles and games nowadays can be fixed with software updates and patches, but if gamers still need help, gaming companies tend to have troubleshooting pages available on their websites to help gamers who are stuck.
Nowadays, support for older game consoles has mostly ended since most of the consoles aren't working anymore and are often put on display for nostalgia's sake.
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Written by: Nhx Tingson
