By now you may have read our article on how to replace the 72-pin connector in your Nintendo Entertainment system, but replacing the connector is sometimes only half the story in getting your console system tuned up for hours of endless entertainment. Oftentimes, the culprits in causing the dreaded grey/blinking screen issue are the video game cartridges that go in and out of a system over long periods of time. These cartridges build up dirt, grime, and oxidation over a period of time, and just like the pin connectors on your console(s), the dirty contacts can prevent your games from working properly, or at all.

What can you do? Keep reading for some ideas on how to keep your games in shape for years to come.

Cleaning Your Video Game Cartridges

At the Replayed Video Games, we've purchased used cartridge-based video games from numerous sources, and in some cases found that they did not work, as in we’d typically see a blinking/grey screen. More often than not, these so-called broken games are easily fixed, unless of course they game itself has been physically damaged (though the owner has personally seen a Nintendo Entertainment System survive being thrown out of truck bed in a rollover crash, or so he tells us!) or the ROM (read, game data) is bad.

First, here are the things you should NOT do to a video game cartridge from any system:

1.  • Blow on the contacts/inside the game cartridge - doing this will eventually cause the cartridge contacts to become corroded due to the fine mist of saliva and left-over pizza particles that gets sprayed on them.
2.  • Sand cartridge or circuit too often - doing this may eventually remove the finish from the contacts and prevent your game form working at all. Sanding the cartridge contacts is generally the last resort when a game won’t work.
3.  • Use solvents on the plastic casing, game stickers, or circuitry of any video game cartridge. Typically, isopropyl alcohol is good enough to clean dirt from cartridge contacts.

Second, here are some key tips for making sure your video game console and cartridges keep working for years to come:

1.  • If you have ever had the pin connector (what the cartridges attach to) in your video game system replaced, or have purchased a system with a new pin connector installed, CLEAN ALL OF THE GAMES you ever put into that new system, or you’ll find that repaired system giving you the ominous blinking/grey screen within a few weeks time.
2.  • Store your video games cartridges in dust jackets, in cool, dry environments

Why Good Game Cartridges Go Bad

Take for instance, one of our all-time favorite Atari 2600 games, Q-bert, which was released in 1983 by Parker Bros. Since the cartridges are now over 20 years old, many of them have succumbed to grime buildup and oxidation, the banes of cartridge-video games.

Oxidation is the process by which a substance combines with oxygen (who would've thought?), and in the case of the metals used for the contacts in cartridge-based games, the metals become a substance less conductive than what they were before, preventing the game cartridge from connecting to the console, sort of like how a fouled spark plug in a car doesn't fire either.

Grime buildup happens over time from repeated insertion and removal of cartridges into a video game systems, as is evidenced by dark staining of the cartridge contacts, and looks to similar to oxidation. For our purposes in this article, we will be treating both problems with the same solution.

Clean Your Game Cartridges

The easiest, least expensive, and most important thing you can do to prolong or renew the life of your cartridge-based video games is to clean them with a light solvent. In a number of cases, this solution will be enough to restore your game(s) to working order, though it may only be a temporary solution, and in some cases will not work at all. We’ll consider alternatives to this solution later on in the article.

In order to clean your cartridges with this method, you'll need the following items:

1.  • Q-tips or cottonballs (Q-tips are better)
2.  •  Rubbing Alcohol (also known as Isopropyl Alcohol) or acetone. Isopropyl alcohol and acetone are light solvents which will be used to remove the oxidative layer over the game contacts. Keep in mind that though many solvents are good for removing grime and oxidation, they are also really good at dissolving plastics, glue, and stickers, so be sparing and cautious in their use, and heed all warnings found on the solvent containers.

1.  • Hold the game so the contacts are at a slight angle to the ground, as you don't want any of your solvent running back inside the cartridge itself.
2.  • Apply a small amount of acetone or rubbing alcohol to the end of your Q-tip and proceed to brush the cartridge contacts on one side with a downward stroke. You may see a small amount of black grit accumulate on the Q-tip, which is a good sign indicating you are removing the oxidation.
3.  • Repeat this process on the other side of the contacts, using the clean opposite head of the Q-tip.
4.  • Allow the cartridge contacts to dry for a minute, and once they are dry, plug in your game and see if it works. If it works, you can get back to gaming!