Study: blowing into NES cartridges is a bad idea ? Video Games ...

If the phrase ?blowing into a video game cartridge? doesn?t immediately strike up years of memories from your early gaming days, you missed out. It was a ritual, a tradition, a part of the coming-of-age of the golden days of gaming. But did you ever stop to wonder if blowing your moist breath all over a fragile electronic product was actually the right thing to do?

When the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was released in the US, its design is believed to be what led to the cartridge-blowing phenomenon. Having the game encased inside a hidden compartment led to the conception that it could become filled with dust and other particles, since users could not really see where cartridges made contact with the system. So blowing into the system, and blowing into the cartridges, seemed to make sense. The most compelling reason was because it seemed to work. Of course, there is also an argument that taking the cartridge in and out without blowing into it could have had the same effect.

Chris Higgins from Mental Floss decided to research the age-old phenomenon, and found that experts tend to think that it was overall a bad idea, with some calling it nothing more than a placebo effect. Others say it actually led to damage of the games over time.

Also brought to light was a study that gaming enthusiast Frankie Viturello conducted in which he blew into one NES cartridge every day for a month, did not tamper with another one, and then used both of them equally. The results can be seen in the picture above. No one can say that looks like a healthy cartridge.

Perhaps it is true that there was an immediate positive impact by blowing into the games, but the experts seem to agree that no matter how tempting it is, it should be avoided.

via Mental Floss

Source: http://www.geek.com/articles/games/study-blowing-into-nes-cartridges-is-a-bad-idea-20120927/

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