Technical problems in video gaming

Muteki · Post by **Muteki** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:31 am

Something that's never ceased to amaze me:

When you insert a cartridge in your console, turn it on, and you get a blank screen. You can turn it it off and on again with no luck, you can even remove and re-insert the cart to no avail, however if you hold the cart somewhere near your face and blow into it, it will magically work again like a loyal manservant.

jimid2 · Post by **jimid2** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:55 am

The first technical problems I ever had to deal with with video games (consoles) was blowing out the dust and dirt on my NES to get certain games to run... After that, I was lucky for a long while, and the only technical issues I had to deal with involved writing custom AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to run various computer games in DOS... Then I bought a PS2, and had three drives die on me over three years. So I bought an XBox, and the harddrive failed 92 days after purchase, two days after the expiration of the 90 day warranty, and Microsoft would do nothing for me (well, they said they would repair it for $120

so I told them to censored off )... Since then, the only problem I've had was with a failed PSP UMD drive after my daughter threw the system at my son because he was teasing her...

Elgin_McQueen · Post by **Elgin_McQueen** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:48 am

Muteki wrote:Something that's never ceased to amaze me:

When you insert a cartridge in your console, turn it on, and you get a blank screen. You can turn it it off and on again with no luck, you can even remove and re-insert the cart to no avail, however if you hold the cart somewhere near your face and blow into it, it will magically work again like a loyal manservant.

GovanGer · Post by **GovanGer** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:51 am

I just LOL'd in work at that cartoon, and had to turn it into a cough/snort combo so I didn't get caught

Elgin_McQueen · Post by **Elgin_McQueen** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:53 am

GovanGer wrote:I just LOL'd in work at that cartoon, and had to turn it into a cough/snort combo so I didn't get caught

LMAO, glad I put up a pic people could enjoy.

Kaede · Post by **Kaede** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:58 am

Haha nice one Elgin, so true.

Only system that's ever conked out on me was the C64. I used to have the breadbin version which I gave away to a relative so I could get the newer model. I got through 3 newer machines before finding a stable one that worked and the breadbin version wored the whole time.

Muteki · Post by **Muteki** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:59 am

Actually, speaking of dodgy carts, I bought Virtua Racing (MD) for Â£2 a while back, but when you plug & play, it only likes animating polygons for about 5 seconds, then the game freezes (with the music still playing). If you press start to quickly skip past the attract mode then you can get to the select screens and everything, but when you start a game, again, it locks up after a few seconds' racing.

Fried SVP, or worth opening it up and cleaning it out?

Old Skool Gamer · Post by **Old Skool Gamer** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:16 am

i had a starnge problem with a 32x i got for xmas one year, i had a mega drive 1. I put the 32x in the mega drive and the game i had with it was virtua fighter, i couldnt wait to play it, i started it up and selected my character, it started into fight mode but something was wrong, i could hear the characters fighting but i couldnt see them, the heatlh bars were moving aswell, there was nothing there except the arena, the camera would even move like normal around the screen as if following the characters

my parents swapped both the game and the 32x unit and i had exactly the same problem, i was gutted, nothing to play over xmas, in the end it got taken back and my parents got refunded

still never knew what was up with it to this day? maybe the fault was with my mega drive?

Commander Jameson · Post by **Commander Jameson** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:52 pm

Mighty_Zol wrote:#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.

Did Exactly the same thing to my Speccy, but with a Currah uSpeech.And it took MONTHS to get it repaired by some dodgy bloke in a PortaKabin in Chesterfield. I started losing weight, doing better at school, playing outside.....then it came back. Hurrah!
Then I broke the tape deck buttons on my +2 by getting up from my desk too fast, wobbling the desk and sending my 'ghetto blaster' style stereo off the top of my TV (I don't know why I kept it there) crashing down...

Oh, and when I was ten, for a short period kept my ZX81 under my dartboard whilst I played darts. Then the keys stopped working. The nice man at Video Vault explained that all those little holes in it from stray darts were not good for it's health.

Finally - not really retro but -
GTA - SAN ANDREAS launch day. Booked the day off work, got down to GameStation with all the other 10 year olds wanting this adult masterpiece. (I was 32).
Got it home, 10 minutes in - Disc Read Error.
Now, I've NEVER had a CD or DVD fail on me EVER. So - PS2 to bits, cleaned out, lens cleaned, the works. Spent ALL DAY on the floor carefully moving the laser alignment, test for 10 minutes, FAIL, back to stripping the unit again.

Turns out Rockstar had done a batch of dodgy disks. Went back to the shop and they claimed nearly all the first day sales had come back. B@st@rds.

woody.cool · Post by **woody.cool** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:54 pm

Elgin_McQueen wrote:

LMFAO

That's funny as f@#% - I just laughed so loudly I nearly choked on my Pepsi

That'll teach me to try and read RG forum and drink Pepsi at the same time.

woody.cool · Post by **woody.cool** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:56 pm

Commander Jameson wrote: GTA - SAN ANDREAS launch day. Booked the day off work, got down to GameStation with all the other 10 year olds wanting this adult masterpiece. (I was 32).
Got it home, 10 minutes in - Disc Read Error.

I'm glad I'm not the only one - this happened to me too. I went down the GS and demanded that they replaced the disc

R Type blood donor · Post by **R Type blood donor** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:29 pm

Old Skool Gamer wrote:i had a starnge problem with a 32x i got for xmas one year, i had a mega drive 1. I put the 32x in the mega drive and the game i had with it was virtua fighter, i couldnt wait to play it, i started it up and selected my character, it started into fight mode but something was wrong, i could hear the characters fighting but i couldnt see them, the heatlh bars were moving aswell, there was nothing there except the arena, the camera would even move like normal around the screen as if following the characters

my parents swapped both the game and the 32x unit and i had exactly the same problem, i was gutted, nothing to play over xmas, in the end it got taken back and my parents got refunded

still never knew what was up with it to this day? maybe the fault was with my mega drive?

Try these links:

right at the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wApMBF2S ... re=related
beginning of this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbw35TfW ... re=related
It sounds like the same problem you had

Spooky · Post by **Spooky** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:01 pm

Biggest problem I had was with my NES and the bloody grey screen... but luckily, my brother fixed it... and bought a dozen old NES on ebay to fix them too and sell them...

I remember I also had a PSone that broke down, but was quickly replaced by the store where I bought it...

Otherwise, touching wood!!!

(especially since I own the oh-so-fragile Xbox 360)

The Last Ginja · Post by **The Last Ginja** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:32 pm

My Christmas day 84 was ruined by my Commodore 64 SID chip not working. That and I had to play it on a 7 inch B&W portable all day.

Scarred me for life that did.

woody.cool · Post by **woody.cool** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:40 pm

I had a similar experience with my A500+

On crimbo day I had to play it in silence - my dad had flicked the little switch to the wrong setting on the back of the RF Modulator so I wasn't getting any sound

I discovered the problem the following day!

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