Blowing on the cart was never the fix. I open things up properly, clean the contacts and the housing, and get rid of the grime that builds up over thirty-odd years so your games boot the first time, every time — whether they arrive from across town or across the country.
- Contact pins cleaned of grime, corrosion, and oxidation
- Shells opened with the correct security bits — no prying, no cracked tabs
- Shells washed and dried fully, inside and out
- Careful handling — labels and original artwork stay intact
- Boot-tested on real hardware before it ships back
What's actually on those contacts
A cartridge edge connector is exposed metal. Three decades in a closet, a basement, or a smoker's living room leaves a film of dust, nicotine, skin oils, and oxidation across it. The console isn't rejecting your game — it simply can't read a clean signal through that layer, so you get a black screen, a flashing title, or scrambled sprites.
Swabbing the visible strip rarely reaches it. The contamination sits at the base of the pins and on the reverse face of the board, which is why a cart that looks clean can still refuse to boot.
How I clean them
The shell is opened with the right gamebit driver and the board comes out. Both faces of the contact edge are cleaned back to bright metal, oxidation is removed rather than smeared, and no fibres or residue are left behind. The shell halves are washed and dried separately — trapped moisture is how a freshly cleaned cart turns corroded six months later.
Then it goes back together and gets tested on original hardware. Not once: several cold boots in a row, because an intermittent cart that works on the first try is not a fixed cart.
Systems I clean
NES and Famicom, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and Master System, Atari 2600 and 7800, Game Boy, Color, Advance, and Nintendo DS. Cartridges and the consoles that play them — no discs.
If every game misbehaves in one console, the cartridges probably aren't the problem. That's a console repair, and it's worth sending the console along with the games.
Questions people ask
Will cleaning damage the label or the shell?
No. Shells are opened with the correct 3.8mm or 4.5mm security bit rather than pried, labels are kept dry, and the halves are washed and fully dried separately before reassembly.
How many games can I send at once?
As many as you like. One round of shipping covers the whole box, which is why most people send a stack rather than a single cart.
What if the cart still won't boot after cleaning?
Then we look further — a cracked trace, heavy corrosion, or a console-side fault. You'll get a plain answer about what's wrong and whether it's worth chasing, not a surprise invoice.
Do you clean Game Boy and handheld carts too?
Yes. Game Boy, Color, Advance, and DS carts get the same treatment, scaled down — their contacts oxidize just as readily as a full-size SNES board.
All work is carried out under the repair authorization & risk acknowledgment.