Quote Originally Posted by Slate View Post
Recently, I purchased some Genesis games and 4 wouldn't work; the old Rubbing Alcohol and Q Tip trick wasn't working after many tries (This isn't 2006 anymore, corrosion may be more severe now) but watered down QuikGlo did work for 2 of 4 non working games. I'm still out on the other 2 but it cleaned the contacts very well where Rubbing Alcohol wasn't cutting through the corrosion. It also stripped the original gold plating off but personally, I don't care about that so much when I'm trying to get the game to work.
Did you try using an eraser on the contacts first? I only do this with stubborn games, having to open up the cases and clean the contacts with a good quality eraser. Usually that fixes any issues with corrosion, I cleaned an NES game with thick green corrosion this way and got it to work. If what you're using is stripping off the gold plating I wouldn't use it, without the plating those contacts will just corrode far worse in the future and might not be repairable then.

I did know of a game store that used the thin green Scotch pads to clean contacts, it seemed to work too. I just didn't want to risk it being too abrasive so I used other methods for myself. It didn't strip off the plating though.