Anyone who played video games during the '80s and '90s remembers how much of a pain it was to get some titles up and running. Nowadays you just have to download patches every few days, but back then, if a game started to glitch, there was only one real fix: blowing into the cartridge's insides.
Nintendo fans will swear by it: blowing into the cartridge will help save the game. It was the go-to method for fixing a glitched-out game, but it became more than that; blowing into a cartridge became a part of gaming culture. While it might not hold much relevance today, people still joke about how blowing into a wonky cartridge was the only way to get the thing working.
But what if it didn't really work?
Prepare to have your childhood ruined: as it turns out, blowing into your Nintendo cartridges didn't help at all. In fact, it might have done more harm than good.
For those who never owned a Nintendo Entertainment System, cartridges worked by lining up a series of pins housed within the console and the game itself. If the pins lined up, the game would start normally - if they didn't, players were treated to a mess of pixelated glitches. It was a frequent problem, as the NES forced players to push the cartridge into the console at a strange angle - it wasn't very durable, and it was easy to push too hard and mess the cartridge up.
One fix that managed to make its way into gaming culture was blowing onto the cartridge: supposedly, if there was anything blocking the pins, the game would start out glitched, and blowing into the cartridge would remove any debris. It made sense, and it became a widely-used technique for 'fixing' NES games.
Unfortunately, it seems as if blowing into the cartridge only made things worse. The folks over at Mentalfloss recently conducted a study on the effects of blowing air into NES cartridges, and the results don't lie. Constantly blowing air into a game ends up corroding the pins inside, making it even harder for the pins to properly connect with the console.
When exhaling, it's not as if you're blowing out nothing but oxygen. There's a lot of moisture in our breath, and forcing it into a tiny space results in condensation. Condensation leads to corrosion, which is exactly what you're seeing in the picture above. One cartridge was left alone for a month, while the other was blown on once a day. It's pretty clear that, despite the popularity of the myth, blowing into an NES cartridge is only going to break it down even further.
All those times you were trying to save your copy of Super Mario Bros.? You were only making it worse.
So, if blowing into the cartridge actually did more damage, why did it work so well? According to Frankie Viturello, who helped with the study, a lot of it comes down to the placebo effect:
"I suppose it has a lot to do with the placebo effect...The act of removing, blowing in, and re-seating a cartridge most likely creates another random opportunity for the connection to be better made. So removing the cartridge 10 times and putting back in without blowing on it might net the exact same results as blowing on it between each time."
There you have it: all those times you blew into a copy of Duck Hunt were in vain. At least nowadays you can just re-download old games from the Nintendo eShop.
For even more details on how you almost ruined your old NES games, head on over to Mentalfloss.
Photo: Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada | Flickr
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