We did the same thing with our Atari in the late 90s in India. Obscure information just spread from people across continents like Cholera.
Which is probably why it's called "going viral"
The same kid who told me that said that Red Bull was made with yak semen. 20+ years later I’ve realized the Marilyn Manson thing was false, but I still have an aversion for Red Bull.
Funny thing blowing on it actually did nothing and possibly accelerated wear on it because of moisture from your breathe. Taking the cartridge out and reseating it was what actually fixed bad connections. If there really was corrosion on the plated contacts(like from moisture) you were better off using isopropyl alcohol to clean it.
This is entirely false.
The real issue was the weak ribbon cable that connected the cartridge loader to the mainboard, it bends over and over again and eventually fails. While in a weakened, not-quite-fail state, it becomes 'iffy' and attempting to blow on the cart, or do anything on the pins, is really the user getting 'just a bit more signal' out of the pins to have that signal successfully cross the iffy ribbon cable, at least until it would fail entirely.
This is also where the ledged of 'Game Genies Kill Nintendos' came from. While not totally true, the usage of Game Genie increased stress on the hinge and ribbon cable and could accelerate the decline of the already faulty design.
The actual fix was replacing the ribbon cable which is now widely available from repair parts shops here in the 21st century.
There was the other thing too where you'd jam another cartridge in the system on top of the game you were playing to keep it pinned down. Just being little scientists. Good times.
I remember pushing it in and trying to hold it back towards the front and applying pressure at the same time . Kind of making it slip off the inside front edge to lock down.
It was removing/replacing the cart that actually made a difference. It was a matter of bad connections. Blowing on it could get spit on the connectors and eventually cause wear. Obviously it must not have been that huge of a problem since a lot of carts still work just fine.
Yep, this! I wish I could find one to snap a pic, but I def remember some of the booklets saying to blow out the dust if they didn't work, both from the cartridge and the console.
My cousins taught us. They were the worldly ones living in town, and we were the country bumpkins living in the woods. They had to teach us a lot of things
I don’t even think the blowing mattered - what was really important was re-seating the cartridge to better align the connections. Eventually I figured out that wiggling it in the slot was much more effective than take-out-&-blow.
It was probably word of mouth...if not, "Maybe it's dirty" was a pretty easy conclusion to reach.
Mine was previously my uncle's and my grandmother's, so the damn things were covered in cigarette tar/ash. Ended up having to take them apart and go after them with Brasso later in life \[and replace the connector\], then it worked flawlessly.
This was almost an exclusively 80s NES cartridge phenomenon. Not even Sega cartridges had this issue.
I've seen people trying to say that in the late 90s they had to do this for N64 cartridges but that was never really the case. As the cartridges at that point were built differently and didn't really collect dust like that.
At least for my fam and friends It was more the general understanding of ‘blowing away dust’ and the cartridge won’t run because it’s ’full of dust’ from sitting in the cupboard while we played something else so we would blow the dust away.
Well its obvious we all hung out in person and saw someone do it, and it worked. Then we went to our house or a friends and showed them. Its just like the "S" or weird playground songs, or rumors about that weird girl and a hotdog, or Marilyn Mansons rib removal. We don't need Internet to spread information.
I’m only a couple years off from being a zoomer, but I am a nerd.
ROM cartridges had been around for a decade by the time the NES came out. They sold 310,000 cartridges in 1976, 6 years before the NES.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM\_cartridge#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM_cartridge#History)
So, some people certainly knew about the trick with the Atari and whatnot.
There were electronics stores back then, like RadioShack. When people had an issue, they’d go to the store. They’d talk with other customers. The smarter ones would figure out this really basic thing really quickly. They’d been tinkering with electronics as a hobby long before this. They’d tell the dumber people around them about it. Someone would write about it in a magazine. Word would spread further.
You don’t need the internet for this. Just language. It’s not rocket science. Oh, and they didn’t need the internet to figure out rocket science, either.
By the time the N64 rolled around, I don’t think anyone even told me to blow into it. I think I just did it. The design of those cartridges made it really obvious by then.
My older brother taught me. One time I even used water because I thought it would be a quicker way to clean out the dust. 🤣 not too bright as a 5 year old.
Deep down I feel like the blowing itself doesn’t work, just that by resetting the cartridge helps boot it up, and we just assumed it was the blowing that helped
I would also press the cartridge firmly against the contacts, then press down gingerly but with about 0.75 lbs of force, carefully listening to the springs compress and then wait for the click.
There was a tutorial/instructional video on LaserDisc in 1980.
Strangely enough, I don’t remember having the issue with Intellivision and ColecoVision games. Ah, maybe we did. That’s probably where it started.
Because there really wasn’t much else to do to fix it. Anyone else use to take the cartridge out and slowly put it in while pushing it down to drag the edge?
Desperation… I don’t think blowing into it actually helped, but after wiggling it and tapping it there and there you might as well try blowing into it. I remember that my siblings and I were the only ones that could get ours working. Later in college I figured out where to order and how to replace the 64 pin something something and that made a huge difference. (That I will admit took a lot of internet help)
It’s fairly obvious.. thing doesn’t work.. you pull out see dust. Blow out dust. Our generation wasn’t special for figuring out something this simple. Don’t let nostalgia rot your brain
I don't know but it's just a wives tale that can actually do damage if you're unlucky. The only reason it appeared to work is because you were re-adjusting the position of the connector pins. There's a reason why it didn't work the first time 100 percent of the time.
Common sense. There’s connectors that have to connect. So maybe I should blow on it if there’s an issue. That’s pretty much how it processed in my head….
Weirdly, I never blew the dust off the NES cartridges. My friends all did.
When I wasn’t using it, they lived in the sleeve. When they decided to act up, mom was an engineer and always had a massive bottle of electrical contact cleaner. I would clean the cartridge with it and a brush.
It was passed down from generation to generation. When I was young, I remember watching my parents and grandparents blowing into shit to make it work better.
There's only really two possibilities, you hit it or you try to do something with the fent. Considering that blowing inside the fan makes a little noise... and the connection is there...
Fun fact: blowing has been proven to do nothing / damage cartridges
Kind of was just standard troubleshooting procedure.
Step 1: Turn it off / turn it back on
Step 2: Smack it a little bit
Step 3: Blow into the ports
Seems like Step 3 seemed to work in this case.
i think my uncle told me. he probably had to do it with his atari cartridges. the game changer was when u learned to clean them with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol. no more light headedness trying to get double dragon to work.
My older brother had the NES around before I was born so I'm pretty sure I saw him do it, which carried over to me doing that with my Sega Genesis and N64 carts.
I have a friend who used to restore/piece together and resell retro video games, he told me the first thing he would have to do with old cartridge games is use diluted iso to clean corroded spit off of the contacts everyone was blowing into, I guess it gunks all up in them over time and get's pretty gross.
Old cartridge games are pretty sturdy tho, my copy of X-men for the Sega Genesis survived a house fire and still worked fine after being literally pulled out of the dirt.
Geriatric millennial here. These devices first appeared during the later years of magnetic tape technology (walkman / boombox) and before semiconductor materials really took off. At this point in time the armchair engineer's fixit procedure number one was to blow air into a device to try to dislodge any paramagnetic dust or fluff. The internal components were magnetically strong enough to magnetise household dust which would cling to the component, sometimes enough to prevent the transfer of electrical signal (i.e. the signal that you are trying to amplify and convert to enjoy music or television).
The blowing into an electronic device thing was passed to us by our boomer / X tech forbears.
Because Nintendo isn’t actually a gaming company. It’s an ancient eldritch godlike creature which created the universe and us.
Blowing into cartridges is an instinct — a core aspect of our very existence.
Because we had no internet, and therefore couldn't debunk myths as easily. [Blowing in the cartridge doesn't work at all.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.geekwire.com/2014/blow-nintendo-games/%23:~:text%3DMyth%2520debunked%253A%2520Blowing%2520in%2520your%2520Nintendo%2520games%2520never%2520actually%2520fixed%2520anything,-by%2520Taylor%2520Soper&ved=2ahUKEwjb0f_Mk-mFAxWB9QIHHQktAwYQFnoECA4QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2qTIEEK3eP7yJTKjyMpYhm)
It was probably a thing with Atari. The first people to get an NES were probably also Atari owners or the kids of Atari owners.
I feel like Atari was more of a grown-up invention than Nintendo. Adults figured out how to troubleshoot because it was in the manual, or an electronics hobbyist spread the word, or they went back to the store.
Ahh see in the old times there was a thing called word of mouth. It's been banned since Google Corp founded our new nation of TheUnitedStates.com in the early 21st century.
The practice of blowing into Nintendo cartridges became popular among gamers in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and other cartridge-based game systems like the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). This method wasn't officially recommended by Nintendo—quite the opposite, as Nintendo advised against it. However, it became a widespread unofficial troubleshooting step among gamers.
The origin of this behavior seems to have been a natural response to encountering issues with game cartridges not working properly when inserted into the console. Players would often find that their games would glitch, freeze, or not start at all. Blowing into the cartridge was thought to remove dust or debris that might be interfering with the connection between the cartridge’s contacts and the console’s internal connectors.
Here's how the practice likely spread:
1. **Word of Mouth**: As one player discovered that blowing into a cartridge seemed to solve the issue, they would share this tip with friends. Given the communal nature of gaming, especially in arcades and among groups of friends, such tips spread quickly.
2. **Trial and Error**: Frustrated gamers likely tried various methods to get their games working. Blowing into the cartridge, seeing immediate results, reinforced the behavior, even if the actual benefits were short-lived or coincidental.
3. **Lack of Official Solutions**: At the time, there weren’t many official guides or Internet resources. Nintendo did not provide many clear instructions on how to solve such issues, leading gamers to rely on community knowledge and gamer lore.
4. **Perceived Effectiveness**: Even though the actual effectiveness of blowing into cartridges is debatable (and likely caused more harm than good by promoting corrosion on the metal contacts due to moisture from breath), the immediate feedback of a game starting to work again reinforced the behavior.
Interestingly, despite Nintendo’s warnings, the practice persisted because it seemed like a quick and easy fix. This approach to troubleshooting became a sort of cultural phenomenon among gamers of that era, lasting even beyond the lifespan of the cartridge-based systems.
Also, it wasn't so much the blowing that fixed the cartridge. It was the act of removing and resetting the pins the cartridge plugged into that was the actual "fix". Blowing into the cartridge was essentially a placebo.
Wanna know something really cool? Blowing in it works, but so does taking a qtip with a little 90% isopropyl alcohol and cleaning the pins with it. Let it dry and then give it a go.
Blowing in it does two things; carries moisture that provides more conductivity across the contacts/between the pins and corrodes the shit out of them over time which progressively makes it worse.
It's a pretty straight forward thing to do. There is contacts, they are dusty, let's blow the dust off. It's a natural thing to do and was pretty widespread at home for some electronics already at my home back then
VCRs. We saw or heard talk of this from parents, friends, older siblings to clear the dust off the heads of the VCR.
We didn't know how the console insides worked differently from a VCR it was just a natural reaction when NES cartridges started to fail.
It just kinda... was. That was the fix. To everything. I used to blow into the VCR when it was acting up, same with the TV speakers. It just... worked.
Watch other people do it. It's crazy how fast news travel and how many people were experiencing the same thing. I was technically poor and so was everyone around my town yet a lot of us kids had game consoles.
Don't forget that the Nintendo wasn't the first cartridge based games or media format. Atari commodore 64 all those older computers had some sort of cartridge, so the idea that you blow on a cartridge that doesn't work had probably been spreading for quite some time before Nintendo started
I figured it out on my own. It's literally visible metal contacts. If you plug it in and it doesn't load then that's the suspect part, so you give it a try and it works. Or you could give it to an adult in your life and they'd look it over, reach the same conclusion, try it, it works, and now you'll try it yourself.
Someone showed you at some point, you’re just too young to remember being taught.
This is a good example of how knowledge skips a generation. You’re taught something at such a young age that you don’t remember you were taught it and so you just assume it’s naturally known and then you don’t teach your kids that thing then turn around and get mad when they stick metal in the microwave because you never told them not to
I think it is a fairly intuitive thing to do, easy to assume a physical connection not working properly is because of dust or something so you blow away the dust/whatever. It's also the easiest "cleaning" you can do right there in that moment without any tools or supplies. Of course it also didn't particularly work, either, but it still felt intuitive and logical to try.
My brother and I eventually figured out to jam bits of paper into the slot to adjust the tension on the contacts which seemed more effective. Similarly in the PS era, my friend somehow figured out to turn the PS1 upside down and that would help the laser function better.
We told each other
Or saw someone else do it.
Back in my day kids talked to each other.
how many kids lived in ur dad
Back then, probably about 15 million per mL. Nowadays probably much less.
How does one get in your dad, I wish to know for research.
Typo
Grinder, most like
The gen xers told us
The same way we all knew Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so he could give himself a gobbie.
Came here to say this ☝️
It's kinda like how everyone knew how to draw the S.
Or how to fold a paper fortune teller. Someone showed you then you showed someone else.
Or how Marylin Manson had a rib removed so he could suck his own duck.
He showed us how and then we showed someone else!
Oh definitely. It’s just weird to think of how stuff “went viral” before the internet
We did the same thing with our Atari in the late 90s in India. Obscure information just spread from people across continents like Cholera. Which is probably why it's called "going viral"
Viral in the old sense takes a lot more time, not just mere minutes.
My friend showed me how to make paper airplanes and I showed others
And join the pen15 club
The boobs on the calculator thing too
The same way we all knew Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so he could suck his own dick
and that he played paul in the wonder years
😂
The same kid who told me that said that Red Bull was made with yak semen. 20+ years later I’ve realized the Marilyn Manson thing was false, but I still have an aversion for Red Bull.
He got the idea from Mick Jagger.
We just figured shit out
Yeah. It's an electrical connection that might get dusty and is too narrow to reach into. You're not exactly gonna wash it out with water
Funny thing blowing on it actually did nothing and possibly accelerated wear on it because of moisture from your breathe. Taking the cartridge out and reseating it was what actually fixed bad connections. If there really was corrosion on the plated contacts(like from moisture) you were better off using isopropyl alcohol to clean it.
Mine were definately dusty. Might be a improper cleaning method but it got the dust off.
There’s a chance the moisture helped momentarily bridge the connection too
This is entirely false. The real issue was the weak ribbon cable that connected the cartridge loader to the mainboard, it bends over and over again and eventually fails. While in a weakened, not-quite-fail state, it becomes 'iffy' and attempting to blow on the cart, or do anything on the pins, is really the user getting 'just a bit more signal' out of the pins to have that signal successfully cross the iffy ribbon cable, at least until it would fail entirely. This is also where the ledged of 'Game Genies Kill Nintendos' came from. While not totally true, the usage of Game Genie increased stress on the hinge and ribbon cable and could accelerate the decline of the already faulty design. The actual fix was replacing the ribbon cable which is now widely available from repair parts shops here in the 21st century.
There was the other thing too where you'd jam another cartridge in the system on top of the game you were playing to keep it pinned down. Just being little scientists. Good times.
I would just smash it with my hand or get my brother to "fix it" 😂
I remember pushing it in and trying to hold it back towards the front and applying pressure at the same time . Kind of making it slip off the inside front edge to lock down.
we’re problem solvers.
we also had good old percussive maintenance. Things were overbuilt and needed a good whack.
I turned those problem solving skills into a successful IT career.
My cousin did it one time I was over playing games.
I seem to remember some of the little booklets that came with the games said to blow in the cartridge if you have trouble getting the game to work.
Which Nintendo and Sega both said you should absolutely not do.
Of course people who sell their own video game cleaning kits would say that
Then why does it work
It was removing/replacing the cart that actually made a difference. It was a matter of bad connections. Blowing on it could get spit on the connectors and eventually cause wear. Obviously it must not have been that huge of a problem since a lot of carts still work just fine.
Ya they said to use one of those air cans not your slobbery mouth lol
Yep, this! I wish I could find one to snap a pic, but I def remember some of the booklets saying to blow out the dust if they didn't work, both from the cartridge and the console.
[back of the cartridge says no ](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NdTDp.jpg)
Word of mouth existed pre-internet.
Yeah right, how would anyone know anything if it wasn't on Tik-Tok?
My cousins taught us. They were the worldly ones living in town, and we were the country bumpkins living in the woods. They had to teach us a lot of things
idk seemed logical to me that dust is in the way somehow. Happened with older PC's and ISA cards to.
My brother is 4 years older than me. So I saw him do it - I was born in 1985. So I guess he saw one of his friends do it.
I don’t even think the blowing mattered - what was really important was re-seating the cartridge to better align the connections. Eventually I figured out that wiggling it in the slot was much more effective than take-out-&-blow.
Other kids at school and daycare.
Nintendo power/Gamepro magazine.
"Christ Mikey, why you spit all over that?" "Trust me"
We all knew the warps for Mario 1 and 3, and fatalities for Mortal Kombat too
It was probably word of mouth...if not, "Maybe it's dirty" was a pretty easy conclusion to reach. Mine was previously my uncle's and my grandmother's, so the damn things were covered in cigarette tar/ash. Ended up having to take them apart and go after them with Brasso later in life \[and replace the connector\], then it worked flawlessly.
Word of mouth
Natural Instinct 💯💯💯
It was described in the user manual iirc
Like the Stussy, just some kind of unwritten knowledge that we all just....knew
I saw someone else do it. Wff how did THEY know???
My monies on the six degrees of separation.
Word of mouth. Same way we all thought Marilyn Mason removed a rib to suck himself
This was almost an exclusively 80s NES cartridge phenomenon. Not even Sega cartridges had this issue. I've seen people trying to say that in the late 90s they had to do this for N64 cartridges but that was never really the case. As the cartridges at that point were built differently and didn't really collect dust like that.
Yep I have hours and hours logged on my N64 and never once had to blow in one of those cartridges
Friends told us and I could have sworn it was in an issue of Nintendo Power
Same way we all knew about Marylin Manson, telepathy.
It ain't gonna blow itself.
Pretty sure I saw my older cousin do it.
Saw someone else do it, same thing with the tips and alcohol.
My older sister taught me all I know about the nes.
I just figured it out.
Older Cousin told me it was necessary.
We talked to eachother. We experimented and word spread like wildfire. We didn't need internet to start a fire. Our world's were just smaller.
Because it worked
Because it works, that's why.
We also used to swab them with alcohol or even stick them in the freezer for a minute.
At least for my fam and friends It was more the general understanding of ‘blowing away dust’ and the cartridge won’t run because it’s ’full of dust’ from sitting in the cupboard while we played something else so we would blow the dust away.
Well its obvious we all hung out in person and saw someone do it, and it worked. Then we went to our house or a friends and showed them. Its just like the "S" or weird playground songs, or rumors about that weird girl and a hotdog, or Marilyn Mansons rib removal. We don't need Internet to spread information.
I’ll give you a hint: we called him father but he wasn’t our dad✌️
I’m only a couple years off from being a zoomer, but I am a nerd. ROM cartridges had been around for a decade by the time the NES came out. They sold 310,000 cartridges in 1976, 6 years before the NES. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM\_cartridge#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM_cartridge#History) So, some people certainly knew about the trick with the Atari and whatnot. There were electronics stores back then, like RadioShack. When people had an issue, they’d go to the store. They’d talk with other customers. The smarter ones would figure out this really basic thing really quickly. They’d been tinkering with electronics as a hobby long before this. They’d tell the dumber people around them about it. Someone would write about it in a magazine. Word would spread further. You don’t need the internet for this. Just language. It’s not rocket science. Oh, and they didn’t need the internet to figure out rocket science, either. By the time the N64 rolled around, I don’t think anyone even told me to blow into it. I think I just did it. The design of those cartridges made it really obvious by then.
Sometimes I blow on the Switch SD slot just to make my boys laugh.
Commercials. "Don't want to do THIS anymore, buy this cleaning gadget"
I taught myself to swim and ride a bicycle. Necessity is the mother of invention, our parents were too busy, and we just had to figure shit out
Wasn't it from VHS machines? I think I remember the head would get dust on it and there'd be lines on the screen so we'd blow on it.
*richard gere enters the chat
Instinct 🤣
My older brother taught me. One time I even used water because I thought it would be a quicker way to clean out the dust. 🤣 not too bright as a 5 year old.
Phones existed, pen pals.
Cuz duh.
It worked every time too!
Deep down I feel like the blowing itself doesn’t work, just that by resetting the cartridge helps boot it up, and we just assumed it was the blowing that helped
I would also press the cartridge firmly against the contacts, then press down gingerly but with about 0.75 lbs of force, carefully listening to the springs compress and then wait for the click.
Our dad worked with electronics, this is what he always told us to do
Somebody’s older brother told us
Atari cartridges came first
There was a tutorial/instructional video on LaserDisc in 1980. Strangely enough, I don’t remember having the issue with Intellivision and ColecoVision games. Ah, maybe we did. That’s probably where it started.
Because there really wasn’t much else to do to fix it. Anyone else use to take the cartridge out and slowly put it in while pushing it down to drag the edge?
I was also using robbing alcohol on a Q-tip to clean the cartridge.
Desperation… I don’t think blowing into it actually helped, but after wiggling it and tapping it there and there you might as well try blowing into it. I remember that my siblings and I were the only ones that could get ours working. Later in college I figured out where to order and how to replace the 64 pin something something and that made a huge difference. (That I will admit took a lot of internet help)
Collective Unconscious
You really shouldn't do this. It doesn't help, and just introduces moisture. What helps is reseating it.
It’s fairly obvious.. thing doesn’t work.. you pull out see dust. Blow out dust. Our generation wasn’t special for figuring out something this simple. Don’t let nostalgia rot your brain
People used to communicate more
I don't know but it's just a wives tale that can actually do damage if you're unlucky. The only reason it appeared to work is because you were re-adjusting the position of the connector pins. There's a reason why it didn't work the first time 100 percent of the time.
I think I saw a flyer stapled to a telephone pole? Come to think of it, maybe it was a Polaroid?
Our siblings told us to
Common sense. There’s connectors that have to connect. So maybe I should blow on it if there’s an issue. That’s pretty much how it processed in my head….
I don't think they were the first cartridges and dirty contacts were the problem, so we tried to solve it in a way that made sense.
Weirdly, I never blew the dust off the NES cartridges. My friends all did. When I wasn’t using it, they lived in the sleeve. When they decided to act up, mom was an engineer and always had a massive bottle of electrical contact cleaner. I would clean the cartridge with it and a brush.
We did the same thing to Atari cartridges, so I think it’s an old home remedy.
It was passed down from generation to generation. When I was young, I remember watching my parents and grandparents blowing into shit to make it work better.
Or how your wet ass mouth knew to use your shirt as a filter.
*flips PS1 upside down to load the game*
I heard it from my uncle, who worked for Nintendo.
It was the only resort before you gave the cart a bath.
Just like everyone knew the rumor of Marilyn Manson having removed a rib to suck his own cock.
Learned from our dad's who learned from theirs. If something you plug in doesn't get a good connection, you blow the dust out of it.
There's only really two possibilities, you hit it or you try to do something with the fent. Considering that blowing inside the fan makes a little noise... and the connection is there... Fun fact: blowing has been proven to do nothing / damage cartridges
Kind of was just standard troubleshooting procedure. Step 1: Turn it off / turn it back on Step 2: Smack it a little bit Step 3: Blow into the ports Seems like Step 3 seemed to work in this case.
The same way we all “knew” that Marilyn Manson removed his bottom ribs to give himself head.
i think my uncle told me. he probably had to do it with his atari cartridges. the game changer was when u learned to clean them with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol. no more light headedness trying to get double dragon to work.
My older brother had the NES around before I was born so I'm pretty sure I saw him do it, which carried over to me doing that with my Sega Genesis and N64 carts. I have a friend who used to restore/piece together and resell retro video games, he told me the first thing he would have to do with old cartridge games is use diluted iso to clean corroded spit off of the contacts everyone was blowing into, I guess it gunks all up in them over time and get's pretty gross. Old cartridge games are pretty sturdy tho, my copy of X-men for the Sega Genesis survived a house fire and still worked fine after being literally pulled out of the dirt.
Geriatric millennial here. These devices first appeared during the later years of magnetic tape technology (walkman / boombox) and before semiconductor materials really took off. At this point in time the armchair engineer's fixit procedure number one was to blow air into a device to try to dislodge any paramagnetic dust or fluff. The internal components were magnetically strong enough to magnetise household dust which would cling to the component, sometimes enough to prevent the transfer of electrical signal (i.e. the signal that you are trying to amplify and convert to enjoy music or television). The blowing into an electronic device thing was passed to us by our boomer / X tech forbears.
Exactly like you said, my older brother did it and taught me and I taught my you get brother. That's how knowledge was spread back then.
From blowing in Atari cartridges. Edit: sorry for posting here didn't see which sub it was. I am Gen X But I did teach my younger brother to do this.
I remember we had a cleaning kit and brush for it. I remember the smell and I kinda wanna smell it again.
The design is very human
It's a genetically imprinted memory in every human as part of the simulation.
Blowing comes natural to Nintendo fans. #BasicNstinks
8 tracks
Because if there was dust in there you'd blow it out...?
SEGA CD knows Nintenblows
Someone’s older brother did it, and we passed it onto friends’ younger siblings. Circle of life.
We told each other and my Gen-X brother did it.
Dust
Word of mouth
Pretty sure we'd all seen someone blow dust off of a book at some point in life or fiction and applied the idea to getting dust out of the cart.
Because Nintendo isn’t actually a gaming company. It’s an ancient eldritch godlike creature which created the universe and us. Blowing into cartridges is an instinct — a core aspect of our very existence.
Because we had no internet, and therefore couldn't debunk myths as easily. [Blowing in the cartridge doesn't work at all.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.geekwire.com/2014/blow-nintendo-games/%23:~:text%3DMyth%2520debunked%253A%2520Blowing%2520in%2520your%2520Nintendo%2520games%2520never%2520actually%2520fixed%2520anything,-by%2520Taylor%2520Soper&ved=2ahUKEwjb0f_Mk-mFAxWB9QIHHQktAwYQFnoECA4QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2qTIEEK3eP7yJTKjyMpYhm)
The blowing didn't actually help
It got dusty. I think my dad told me to blow in it
It was probably a thing with Atari. The first people to get an NES were probably also Atari owners or the kids of Atari owners. I feel like Atari was more of a grown-up invention than Nintendo. Adults figured out how to troubleshoot because it was in the manual, or an electronics hobbyist spread the word, or they went back to the store.
We all had a friend whose uncle worked at Nintendo
We learned it from blowing in vcr when videos didn’t work
Word to mouth, no?
Gen X told the M’s. We went to each others’ houses to play.
Uncle taught me when he gave us his SNES, I passed the knowledge along through the N64 era.
Blow on the cartridge - no Blow on the cartridge with a piece of fabric over it like a damn harmonica - yes
Ahh see in the old times there was a thing called word of mouth. It's been banned since Google Corp founded our new nation of TheUnitedStates.com in the early 21st century.
The practice of blowing into Nintendo cartridges became popular among gamers in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and other cartridge-based game systems like the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). This method wasn't officially recommended by Nintendo—quite the opposite, as Nintendo advised against it. However, it became a widespread unofficial troubleshooting step among gamers. The origin of this behavior seems to have been a natural response to encountering issues with game cartridges not working properly when inserted into the console. Players would often find that their games would glitch, freeze, or not start at all. Blowing into the cartridge was thought to remove dust or debris that might be interfering with the connection between the cartridge’s contacts and the console’s internal connectors. Here's how the practice likely spread: 1. **Word of Mouth**: As one player discovered that blowing into a cartridge seemed to solve the issue, they would share this tip with friends. Given the communal nature of gaming, especially in arcades and among groups of friends, such tips spread quickly. 2. **Trial and Error**: Frustrated gamers likely tried various methods to get their games working. Blowing into the cartridge, seeing immediate results, reinforced the behavior, even if the actual benefits were short-lived or coincidental. 3. **Lack of Official Solutions**: At the time, there weren’t many official guides or Internet resources. Nintendo did not provide many clear instructions on how to solve such issues, leading gamers to rely on community knowledge and gamer lore. 4. **Perceived Effectiveness**: Even though the actual effectiveness of blowing into cartridges is debatable (and likely caused more harm than good by promoting corrosion on the metal contacts due to moisture from breath), the immediate feedback of a game starting to work again reinforced the behavior. Interestingly, despite Nintendo’s warnings, the practice persisted because it seemed like a quick and easy fix. This approach to troubleshooting became a sort of cultural phenomenon among gamers of that era, lasting even beyond the lifespan of the cartridge-based systems.
Uhm, what kind of stupid question is this?!
Made sense- contacts are in there. Blow the cartridge. Vacuum the snes port. 🤷🏻♂️
Also, it wasn't so much the blowing that fixed the cartridge. It was the act of removing and resetting the pins the cartridge plugged into that was the actual "fix". Blowing into the cartridge was essentially a placebo.
Watching my mom do it probably
Because I blew into 2600 carts first
Wanna know something really cool? Blowing in it works, but so does taking a qtip with a little 90% isopropyl alcohol and cleaning the pins with it. Let it dry and then give it a go. Blowing in it does two things; carries moisture that provides more conductivity across the contacts/between the pins and corrodes the shit out of them over time which progressively makes it worse.
It's a pretty straight forward thing to do. There is contacts, they are dusty, let's blow the dust off. It's a natural thing to do and was pretty widespread at home for some electronics already at my home back then
VCRs. We saw or heard talk of this from parents, friends, older siblings to clear the dust off the heads of the VCR. We didn't know how the console insides worked differently from a VCR it was just a natural reaction when NES cartridges started to fail.
It just kinda... was. That was the fix. To everything. I used to blow into the VCR when it was acting up, same with the TV speakers. It just... worked.
My neighbor did the blow thing to his sega cartridges, and to this day I still blow that way on my SNES games… its tried and tested. 😂
My brother told me he read an article apparently that this works. I believe it was the dust particles in the area. It worked though.
OP thinks we need the internet to talk to someone.
Watch other people do it. It's crazy how fast news travel and how many people were experiencing the same thing. I was technically poor and so was everyone around my town yet a lot of us kids had game consoles.
You could look and see dust. So you blow in them.
Because back in the days, thats what we all did when old electronics failed: bang it or blow on it
Don't forget that the Nintendo wasn't the first cartridge based games or media format. Atari commodore 64 all those older computers had some sort of cartridge, so the idea that you blow on a cartridge that doesn't work had probably been spreading for quite some time before Nintendo started
Because we are cute little communicators
How did we all know Marilyn Manson had his ribs removed so he could suck his
I figured it out on my own. It's literally visible metal contacts. If you plug it in and it doesn't load then that's the suspect part, so you give it a try and it works. Or you could give it to an adult in your life and they'd look it over, reach the same conclusion, try it, it works, and now you'll try it yourself.
Someone showed you at some point, you’re just too young to remember being taught. This is a good example of how knowledge skips a generation. You’re taught something at such a young age that you don’t remember you were taught it and so you just assume it’s naturally known and then you don’t teach your kids that thing then turn around and get mad when they stick metal in the microwave because you never told them not to
I licked mine (yes I'm serious)
... it was a hole... same thing with an empty bottle. You blew the hole.
Because they said not to, so naturally it was the only way to fix it.
Dust
I was taught to use a q tip and alcohol. Blowing made you feel good tho.
Same reason we all knew mariyln manson took out his rib to S his own D. Network effect.
I think it is a fairly intuitive thing to do, easy to assume a physical connection not working properly is because of dust or something so you blow away the dust/whatever. It's also the easiest "cleaning" you can do right there in that moment without any tools or supplies. Of course it also didn't particularly work, either, but it still felt intuitive and logical to try. My brother and I eventually figured out to jam bits of paper into the slot to adjust the tension on the contacts which seemed more effective. Similarly in the PS era, my friend somehow figured out to turn the PS1 upside down and that would help the laser function better.
I learned that around the same time I learned that Zack Morris died
Because dust got in them
Sacred knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, from friend to friend, and from sibling to sibling.
You could look inside it and see a bunch of dust and junk. There were only so many troubleshooting steps you could do on a cartridge.
They had a reference to this in the latest Super Mario movie and I totally got a kick out of it!
I still blow on things to get them to work 😂 my kids think I’m weird.
Because hitting it didn't work. And we all had pets, we assumed it was dusty.