In the latter half of the 20th Century, we as a society probably didn’t have what you would call “old wives tales,” but we had our own form of it, just conventional wisdom that was passed along between friends, or heck, perhaps just somehow ingrained in our minds like a piece of the public consciousness. One of those pieces of wisdom was what to do when your Nintendo video game cartridge was not working.<\/p>\n
Nintendo video games came in these plastic cartridges that you would plug into your Nintendo video game system to play the games. <\/p>\n
As you can see from the cartridge, the bottom of the cartridge is sort of open…<\/p>\n Therfore, the belief was that if the game wasn’t working properly, there must be some sort of dust that got into the open cartridge that caused some interference and thus, blowing on it would clear the debris and allow the game to work. And anecdotally, it sure seemed to work for most kids. And if it didn’t work right away, you just kept on blowing and blowing until it DID work. <\/p>\n But, really, DID it work? The way that the system worked was that the cartridge had a bunch of little pins and then when pushed into the video game system, the pins (72 of them) would be received by connectors inside the box and a connection would be made. <\/p>\n Problems with the game would be caused by poor connections. So thus, the most logical answer is that simply removing a cartridge PERIOD and then placing it back in would give it another chance at making a good connection. The blowing, then, was more of a placebo effect. It made you feel like you were doing something yourself besides simply removing and re-inserting the cartridge, when in reality it was meaningless. Or, actually, if it had ANY effect, it was a NEGATIVE effect, as the blowing could negatively effect the copper coating on the pins in the cartridge. <\/p>\n Here is Nintendo’s official word on the subject: <\/p>\n Do not blow into your Game Paks or systems. The moisture in your breath can corrode and contaminate the pin connectors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here, also, is a great PBS short film on the topic…<\/p>\n![\"nes_super_mario_bros_2\"](\"http:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/entertainment\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/nes_super_mario_bros_2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n
\n
\nNo, not in the conventional sense. <\/p>\n