Wednesday, November 24, 2010

there's treasure everywhere

On a routine stop at the local thrifty store, I ususally find something awesome.

At the electronics section(ha. I have to stop there. I sometimes laugh even considering some of that crap electronic), I saw the usual pile of Nintendo Gamecubes and like twelve Playstations, and a N64.

Sidenote: I pretty much abandoned Nintendo and jumped on the Playstation bandwagon in the late 90's. The games were better in my opinion. I never really played N64, but they had some nice enough games. If I could, I would probably get one, just for the cartridge nostalgia. All the abandoned Gamecubes are a result of everyone getting a Wii, which also plays Gamecube games.

But then I saw something incredibly rare: three NES's sitting there. After some scrutiny I picked the one that looked the least beat up, found some power cords and TV connectors and took it home.

So the NES needs some TLC. I cleaned it up, and powered it on. The red light blinked so that's a good sign. A lot of old consoles have faded or yellowing plastics from UV exposure. The NES I picked up has some UV fading on the front and left side of the unit, which is pretty awesome considering how old it probably is. Who ever owned it probably just left it on the shelf. My SNES looks terrible, almost like it was baked in the sun. It has something to do with the cheap plastics that were used in Japan, and after 10 years or so, most of them deteriorate. The 72 pin connector inside the unit is probably dirty and corroded like most Nintendos. I'm going to have to open it up and replace it with a better one, or try and clean the contacts on the games I have. An old NES is a temperamental beast, but I think I can resuscitate this one.

Now I just need some controllers and games. That shouldn't be too hard. I've looked for my old NES at my parent's house, but it was probably lost when we moved to UT. All the cords and connectors were probably lost too. I did manage to find four cartridges though, and with some cleaning, I can probably get them playing soon.

3 comments:

Mark Nott said...

or download the games onto you Wii... but where is the fun in that?

Davy J said...

It isn't the same. Owning the actual cartridge is way cooler in my opinion. Besides, they'll never have all the games on there. Too many legal hurdles.

Davy J said...

I retract that last statement. With a large amount of money, I'm sure nintendo can get any game they once licensed for the NES on their virtual console. Still isn't the same though.

I could download them, but what do I really own? Ones and zeros? It would be a lot easier though... Meh.