Technical problems in video gaming

[thl]

Since the Xbox 360 had made headlines thanks to the infamous Ring of Death, I had experienced technical faults before. Likely to occur at some stage, it could lead to breakdown and making it become unrealiable. Whether the adaptor isn't working, computer keeps crashing or cartridge isn't reading, it would likely to happen.

My earliest experience was with the Atari 2600 Jr. When I hit the switch to colour, it strangely appeared black and white. Having to switch the button several times, I wasn't able to resume the game back to colour. Was very annoyed with it.

[JetSetWilly]

mine would be the very first Ring Of Death.
the first day of purchase, my shiny, new 360 sat proudly by my telly! 'perfect!', i thought. loading up Amped 3, i waited, anticipating, yes! it fired up......then froze.
BASTARD!
undeterred, i loaded up Perfect Dark Zero. Sweet! i got past the first screen. Nice! i shot a bad guy......then froze!
NUTS!
tried it again......froze......and again.......RING OF DEATH!!!
mind you i did swap it for another and got a free 64mb card with it and it now works fine (hooray!)

[ShadowMan]

my first technical fault was one of the chips on my first dreamcast dying. Games subsequently looked REALLY bad and crashed after a few minutes. DC2 is fine at the mo though!

I've also had my Snes' mode Seven chipn die so all Mode 7 sections were impossibe to play, other sections were fine. That snes has since been replaced.

[MRMIdAS]

My PS1 stopped spinning disks, so I took it to be fixed, and got it modded at the same time, just to play the original silent hill uncensored....

good times.....

[woody.cool]

My first experience of of technical difficulties was the drive belt breaking on my Amstrad CPC 6128 meaning I would see the following all too ofter:

Drive A: disc missing

Retry, Ignore or Cancel?



My next experience was the dodgy floppy drive on my Amiga 500+

[will2097]

I had spectrum +2a that would reset when I switched the TV off. Power surge I think.

I had VCS2600 with some dodgy switches that could be resolved by stretching an elastic band around the offending switch.

My PS1 needed to be put on it's top.

My DC needed greasing up to make the CD lens run up and down its runners.

My jaguar needs the cartridge to be waggled to make it start.

My Atari STe keyboard gradually packed up. Key-by-key.

My A1200 hard-disk had bad sectors that would cause the computer hang, to remedy this I partitioned the offending sectors out by cleverly splitting the disc into two.

The HD issue wasn't helped by the fact the HD was held in place by Blue Tak and all the screws that held the chasis together were missing. Except for one. Which I named old faithful.

My DS' Gameboy slot was always broken.

And I've given up with my Xbox 360, as it intermittendly chucks the discs out and tells me to put them in a Xbox 360. Usually right in the middle of a game. It's like the sword of damocles hanging over game. Will I shoot the brown space marine or will the console hang? Oh-no it's the console hanging again. Grr.

I am cross with the 360, because it did it fresh from the box. The others took a beating to get them into that state. And the DS is excused on the grounds that I didn't notice it wasn't working for about a year.

List of honor:

My Panasonic FZ-1 PAL. It has the same battery from when I bought it new 13 years ago for goodness sake. It's never gone wrong. Ever.

It's an amazing electronic engineering feat. It was, for a very short time, the cutting edge of technology. It was manufactured by a hardware vendor with at the time had no (or little) games console making experience, and the main-board chip-set was designed by an unproven company. (3DO)

And it's rock solid. You see, things can be made right the first time.

Okay that build quality cost me £400, but I did (eventually) get my moneys worth.

Everything else has been fine.

[SirClive]

I am cross with the 360, because it did it fresh from the box.

Why didn't you take it back?

[Sureshot]

I was fairly lucky with gaming stuff, the only major thing I can remember breaking is various bits of my BBC - the Return key from too much mashing (you had to whack it to actually get it to register, then it actually broke off as a result). The lithium battery also died in the machine after a while and there's the aforetold story of my Cub monitor giving electric shocks when powered on.

Then there's the Saturn we have that always overheats. You can play it fine for a lengthy period, then you go to swap games and the screen displays all wavy and it won't boot anything. You have to leave it for a while to be able to play on it again.

Can't really think of any other technical issues I've had with consoles or PCs. I'm usually to blame for something breaking if it happens.

[SirClive]

My PS laser went a bit dodgy. I gave it to a mate and he cleaned it up. It worked perfectly for another 2 or 3 years.

[will2097]

I am cross with the 360, because it did it fresh from the box.

Why didn't you take it back?

Because it won't repeat the problem on demand. I tried. It works fine for about 30mins, sometimes 40minutes, sometimes not at all for hours.

Eventually it always declares the disc is dirty and ejects it. However, a quick test reveals all is fine. Blockbusters are unwilling to test it for any period of time.

I do actually keep meaning to send it to Microsoft, but the only game I really (really really) enjoyed was PGR4, and since then nothing floated my boat. Everything else I get on the PS3.

I did leave it on solidly for a week, hoping the RRoD would claim it, but mine seems immunised to that.

So the real answer is: I'm too lazy. There - I've said it.

[MikeHaggar]

First was an Atari 2600 jr. which wouldn't turn on after a 10 hour marathon of Bump 'n' Jump the day before.

[Katzkatz]

I think my major hardware fault was on my Amiga A500. It went bad with the flashing power LED (I think it flashes a different set of times for different hardware faults). It went back to the shop I brought it from and was repaired. Never did it again.

[The Master]

It's not really gaming-related, but I had a brand new Compaq PC at work in 1997 that literally exploded with a loud bang and white smoke and censored coming out of the back the moment it was first switched on. Spent the rest of the day in the pub

[bolda]

NES blinking power light (as in, the power light blinks... not like bloomin' power light!) happens to me from time to time, but this is easily fixed with a bit of patience and the smallest flat-head screwdriver in the box!

Also had the 3.5" floppy drive on my original ST pack in a couple of years ago, but this was easily replaced (I bought an extra spare as well) and it was about 13 years old when it finally called it a day so can't really grumble at that.

[Mighty_Zol]

#1 was my 48k spectrum on the day I got it. I made the mistake of plugging in the kempston interface while the machine was switched on - which I later found out was a surefire way of killing the machine. Took about a month to get it repaired / replaced by Dixons.

Since then I've been pretty lucky with Amigas PS1s & 2s. The Dreamcast was a bit tricky, with a duff RGB cable that messed up the colors if you so much as nudged anything near the console or Tv, in later life it would switch itself off at random too.