Gadgetory

if you're anything like me you probably have more than a few cartridges lying around now while these are great I prefer them over CDs and DVDs for a lot of reasons mostly their durability however one thing they can definitely go wrong is that they can get dirty and worn over time now while obviously these all have an expiration date you know they're not gonna last forever you'd be surprised how many of them that you know those might have to start having errors or quit reading actually all they need is just a simple cleaning any cartridge is going to have a series of contacts along the bottom now this pretty much is the same no matter what console you're talking about perhaps it Sega Genesis like here maybe an old Atari a Nintendo 64 there's all kinds but pretty much across the board you'll find a series of contacts inside the cartridge the case now these contacts can get dirty and worn over time and especially if you're noticing like your games are getting slow or you're getting errors that sort of thing I'm definitely worth a shot to clean them out so you know there's a lot of reasons why they can get dirty typically you know cartridges are ten fifteen twenty maybe even over so you can really simply just coin these out with just a couple of things so what you're going to need to do is get yourself a q-tip and I'm sure everyone has a couple of these lying around all you need to do is dab it a little bit of isopropyl alcohol also you might be able to find it as rubbing alcohol so what you need to do is take the q-tip and lightly dab it in the rubbing alcohol now I say lightly dab it I mean you know just take maybe like a capful or something and just lightly get a little bit of it on there you don't want to be dripping or anything like that so all you do is really simply make sure you get some light in here is take it and then just kind of make circular motions around the context of the cartridge now don't worry this is not going to harm it in any way in fact this is what a lot of the videogame manufacturers they used to sell cartridge cleaning kits which pretty much did this exact same thing now most cartridges will have contacts on the front and back so I'll recommend do them both as you guys can see here just one pass got all of this dirt off the cartridge I'm soon as you guys can see here you can definitely imagine how this could cause problems with loading on all kind of stuff typically I like to run through a couple of times so don't use that same tip you want to go ahead and grab the other tip dabble it a little bit in alcohol and then go and swipe it a couple more times once you've completed cleaning out the car texe of the cartridge what you need to do is let it set out for a little while make sure it's fully dry before you answer it into the console this typically should not take that long with the longer you can wait you know make sure it's kind of shouldn't drive the better you will be now the cool thing about this is that it works with anything with a cartridge including even Game Boy games so you just use the same thing although of course the Game Boy games only have one row of contacts there's nothing below it but all you do is just take your q-tip and just run it along inside the contacts to make sure that everything is nice and clean there you guys go you can see there's quite a bit of dirt and whatnot on that so we got all that cleaned out and now well next time we decided to play a little bit of Mario Kart we should be good to go hey guys that's just a quick little tip showing you if you ever have any problems with your cartridges how to clean them up really nice and easy like I said don't worry about that that should not cause any harm like that's the way that they're supposed to be cleaned just be sure that you don't go overboard on the alcohol just get a little bit of rubbing alcohol I don't use anything else just be sure it's a little bit of isopropyl or rubbing alcohol put it on a q-tip and run it probably twice that's what I like to do then let them sit out and dry for a little while and then you should be good to go and go back to enjoying your retro games anyway guys if you found this helpful be sure to subscribe I do lots of other video game and tech related content so if you're interested feel free to hit the subscribe button above and you'll be notified with all my new content