Are Dead Carts common?

[djbeatmongrel]

I've noticed that i tend to get a dead cartridge about 5-10% of the time when i buy used games. is this a common occurance for everyone else?

[Videogamerdaryll]

I've noticed that i tend to get a dead cartridge about 5-10% of the time when i buy used games. is this a common occurance for everyone else?

Tell me about what you've been getting in dead cartridges.
What systems are they bought for.


I have a few carts here and there that I bought that don't work.
For:
C-64
Vic 20
NES
Channel F

MVS
ST-V

I have about 50 -60 Misc Atari 2600 carts in a box that just won't work..

[maxlords]

In all the games I've ever bought, I've NEVER received a dead cart. Not one. I've bought thousands of games too. I consider it a very rare phenomenon....I've never found a cart I couldn't fix by cleaning it, except for one Zelda NES cart that had the pins GROUND off. I wouldn't consider that a dead cart either...that's the pins, not the cart's chip that's dead.

Keep in mind I rarely buy anything pre-NES tho :)

[it290]

I have two Genesis games and one SNES game that I just can't get to work, no matter how much I clean them. It sucks, too, as one of the Genesis games is Dragon's Fury, and I haven't been able to find another copy.

[zektor]

I have been collecting for 20 years, and 99.9% of the problems I have had with carts not working is that the contacts were dirty. I had one single cart that was truly dead however. A loose Golden Axe for the Genesis that I picked up in a box of carts from the Goodwill. But considering, carts have a very very good lifespan.

[unbroken]

well, i dont clean my games, im the type that if a game doesnt work, i throw it away and consider it dead or sell it. I feel that my games should'nt need cleaning(i have had problems from cleaned games later on down the road) i try and keep all the games in my collection as if they were bought directly from the store (even nes).

[Leo_A]

That's all fine if they entered your collection directly from the store, but if you bought used, they're not in that condition and you're just pretending.

I find it hard to believe that you've had 50 dead Atari 2600 carts, something's up somewhere with your system or something.


Out of the thousands of carts I've owned, I've had two that didn't work. One was a Ms. Pac-Man 2600 cart that stopped working, and the second was a used Jungle Strike SuperNes game that was bought dead.

[goatdan]

I don't think it is common at all for carts to be dead. With as many games as I've dealt with for the GOAT Store, we've decided to stop hand testing every cartridge because after about 5000 with no dead carts, it just seemed pointless.

We fully guarantee everything, and we've also never had a returned cartridge.

I bought a package of really poor condition games for various systems, and some were so bad that I just gave them to friends to play with. Amazingly, they all worked -- even NES games with holes in the plastic and ones that clearly had been sitting in puddles of mud.

[whoisKeel]

well, i dont clean my games, im the type that if a game doesnt work, i throw it away and consider it dead or sell it. I feel that my games should'nt need cleaning(i have had problems from cleaned games later on down the road) i try and keep all the games in my collection as if they were bought directly from the store (even nes).

??? send them to me, i'll pay shipping if you're throwing them away :)

I clean all my carts, even if they don't need it at all...that dirt transfers from the carts to the connectors, or at least it has the potential to.

In my limited experience, I've come across zero dead carts. There's been a few I've had to give some special attention to, but no dead ones yet. If you've got tons of dead carts, I would strongly recommend cleaning the pins on the system itself, as well as the carts...just because you can't boot the game doesn't mean it is dead.

I've also heard some people using a very fine grade sandpaper, something like 1000+ grade you can find at auto shops, on the pins of games. I would recommend this as a last resort obviously, but search the restoration forums for more info.

[Aussie2B]

I have a Famicom pirate that has never worked whatsoever, and I have one NES cart that always has glitched up graphics. That's about it. There are a couple SNES games that my sister-in-law has that I haven't been able to get to work at all, though. They did at one point, but I don't know what abuse they've been through. o_O Maybe if I seriously sat down with them and gave them several cleanings with alcohol and an eraser I could get them working again.

[imanerd0011]

"well, i dont clean my games, im the type that if a game doesnt work, i throw it away and consider it dead or sell it"

I'm not flaming you, but that is honestly one of the dumbest things I have ever read in my life. Most vintage games have been collecting dust/dirt for years, and really really need a good cleaning. Just dip some q tips in some rubbing alcohol (diluted with a little water), and rub the contacts of the game. I have done this with all my NES carts, and I have never had a single one that doesn't work perfectly.
To the original thread starter... you might want to check your systems out. If you have that many games that aren't working, it might not be the games, but your system could be the problem.

[TRM]

I've only had two games bought which didn't work at all. One was a copy of Spiritual Warfare, and the other was a prototype of Bible Adventures (which I knew was gonna be dead..speaking of which I need to get those rom chips back). Otherwise, I never had any problems at all.

[SkiDragon]

Ive had just one, Sonic 3.

[VACRMH]

I have two Genesis games and one SNES game that I just can't get to work, no matter how much I clean them. It sucks, too, as one of the Genesis games is Dragon's Fury, and I haven't been able to find another copy.

Odd, the only Genesis cart I own that just wont work is Dragon's Fury as well...

[Bratwurst]

I have had 4 carts come into my possession DOA out of 15 years passively collecting/playing.

One each of a Gameboy, NES, SNES and Genesis cartridge, and I scrutinized each little bastard with a jeweler's loop to see if there was internal damage to be repaired since I'm a thrifty bastard sometimes.

I was only able to bring the SNES cart back to life, it was a Majesco rerelease made in Mexico and one of the traces had come loose from the rom chip. A solder bridge fixed things right up. The rest remain a mystery, probably static discharge killed the chipsets.

[Nesmaster]

ive had a super return of the jedi cart die on me, it was my original one too :(. ive also had a dead double dragon 2, but i knew that prior to purchasing it. i just took it because the label and cart were in excellent condition :)

[qbertandernie]

ive had about 15 games total that were dead. 4 nes, 1 snes and some atari 2600. i cant get those bastards to work for anything, though im learning soldering, so i might try to take em apart and play with them soon. what suckx worst? three of the four nes carts are pirates!, zelda and metroid :(

[Big Papa Husker]

My original copy of DKC (got when released) died in early 2001... No idea what went wrong with it. :(

[Ed Oscuro]

Bad cart connectors are the problem. I've had one DKC III cart that refuses to run on my SNES Model 2 - but then all sorts of stuff (SGB, Actraiser even) needs coaxing to run.

For a while I thought that my copies of Forgotten Worlds and Atomic Runner were bad...nope, just Genesis 2 smartin' off on me. Many resets later, everything will decide to run just fine :D

[spoon]

What you can do to clean carts.

Take them apart, Clean with diluted rubbing alch. Clean with an eraser. can also try cleaning with the sandpaper. I would also check the board for any noticeable problems. Also, if the carts have a battery save feature could try replacing the battery, I would also take apart the system and clean it out.

I myself have only had one dead cart. It was a Tiger Heli for the NES. I tried everything. Even tested it on five different systems. That thing was as dead as they come. I sold it to a game store. Oddly enough, I ended up working there some months later. We actually ended up getting the cart returned to the store while I was working there.

[Vroomfunkel]

Out of the thousands of carts that I have had, I would say that maximum of 2 or 3 did not work. One was a Megadrive Tetris pirate. One was a Mega Key adapter. I think I had another, but I can't remember what it was.

I have rarely even come across a non-working CD based game, although there have been a few. One was Casper for the Saturn, and a few DC games (doesn't take much to bust one of those!) and a coupla PS1s.

I had a Guardian Heroes that I was sure would not work, as it had huge scratches and there was actually a visible hole in the silvering of the disc - you could see right through. But it played absolutely fine!!

In my experience, the Saturn is the least fussy CD system - it will play discs in practically any condition. The only one that didn't was the Casper game, which looked like someone had worked on it with a sandpaper ...

Vroomfunkel

[Flack]

well, i dont clean my games, im the type that if a game doesnt work, i throw it away and consider it dead or sell it. I feel that my games should'nt need cleaning(i have had problems from cleaned games later on down the road) i try and keep all the games in my collection as if they were bought directly from the store (even nes).

Wow, I hate to see your theory on changing the oil in your car!

The whole time I've been buying and selling crap, I think I've picked up 2 2600 games that were dead. Both of them were in lot deals, one was Asteroids and one was Frogger so I didn't do a lot of troubleshooting with them. Never had a bad NES game, seems to me the games are a lot more reliable than the system was. I have a couple of genesis games that seem flakey but they've always fit kind of loose in the slot so I attributed it to that.

Anyone seeing a 10% failure rate should stop shopping in third world countries or ex-nuke sites ...

[Dimitri]

Seems Genesis carts aren't built as well as NES or SNES ones. :/ I used to have a copy of Alisia Dragoon that, for the life of me, I could not get past the "Licensed by Sega" screen. Everything else has been fixed by thorough cleaning of the game or system...or both, when it's an NES game.

Usually when I have a game that doesn't work, I'll skip the q-tips and just wet the tip of my finger and jam it on in there. Of course, I go and wash my hands when I'm done so it hardly saves any time, but it seems to work just as well.

[NESaholic]

I never had a dead cart, guess i'm on of the lucky ones!

[Zoe F]

I have a dead copy of Chavez II for the SNES. :bawling:

But I've only ever had a couple of other carts that have ever been dead. One for the SNES, the other NES.

[rbudrick]

I had a Thunder Force III cart for Genesis die on me...of course that was my fault because I continually pulled it in and out of the system while it was on...many Genesis games have odd cheats and effects happen when you do this. It was a rental though...yeah, not proud of that.

I also have had a few Brazilian Atari 2600 carts die on me. Some were corrosion of contacts due to being in a wet climate, others had EEPROMs in them that suffered some bit rot.

Lastly, I had one pirate famicom cart of Street Fighter III die on me...it never did work. If someone wants to buy it off me thinking they can figure it out, by all means PM me.

[djbeatmongrel]

well the carts i have in this condition have been cleaned repeatedly to the point where the contacts are spotless and they still wont play but the rest of my known functional library for the corresponding system plays fine. :^(

[o2william]

I had a "near-death" cart experience the other day. I recently started my wife playing NES Draon Warrior (all part of my fiendish plans to make her into a gamer :evil:). She'd been playing for about a week and was pretty far into it. The other day, she powers up the console and sees the typical NES interference lines you get from dirty contacts. So I take out the cart and clean it. No good -- nothing but a blank picture. About an hour and multiple cleanings later, I finally get the darn thing working again... but the save data is gone. :( That's the first cart battery I've ever had die on me. Time to move the wife onto DW2.

As far as actual dead carts, I've run into very few. I once had two common Activision 2600 titles that wouldn't work after repeated cleanings. As an experiment, I took the carts apart and scraped the contacts with a metal file. They worked! Right now, I have a 2600 Crash Dive cart that displays a rolling picture (similar to a PAL cart, but it's not PAL). I've thrown out maybe 5 dead 2600 and NES carts total, but they were all super-commons so I didn't put too much effort into saving them.

[it290]

Odd, the only Genesis cart I own that just wont work is Dragon's Fury as well...


I've heard reports of dead Grind Stormers as well... which leads me to believe that Tengen may have used some poor quality ROM chips in their Genesis games.

[Dr. Morbis]

I've only had one dead NES cart cross my path out of about 1000 NES carts. I cleaned the living shit out of that Gumshoe and tried everything, but it was deader than Elvis.

I pity all you Disc based game collectors out there. Do you ever find used Discs that aren't scratched all to hell?

[Nez]

I've only had one dead NES cart cross my path out of about 1000 NES carts. I cleaned the living shit out of that Gumshoe and tried everything, but it was deader than Elvis.

I pity all you Disc based game collectors out there. Do you ever find used Discs that aren't scratched all to hell?

Most of my DC collection has minty fresh discs. So its no too hard to find em.

I've only had one dead cart. Ninja Gaiden for the SNES. I wanted to play it so badly that I opend it up to find moldy stuff on the internal board. I cleaned it off and now it works fine.