I went home last weekend for a checkup. The checkup went normally, I got two wonderful home-cooked meals, did my best to relax for a day and a half, and came back yesterday with my old Super Nintendo that's been sitting up in the spare bedroom for about six years. The suitemates gave me the idea to bring it up. They play Jason's original Nintendo all the time, and when I mentioned I had a Super Nintendo, their eyes just lit up. I had forgotten how many incredibly cool games I had:
- : All three original Nintendo Mario games plus the unreleased Japanese version of Super Mario 2, all updated for the SNES with better graphics
- & : The quintessential Super Nintendo games
- : A fun alien shootemup
- Secret of Mana & The Legend of Zelda: Two classic RPGs
- Street Fighter II: I was amazing at this game
- Starfox: I beat all three (four?) paths
- Donkey Kong Country I & II: I Beat both of these, too
- Plus a dozen others...
I stopped playing not because I got tired of the games, but because my dog decided to claim the Nintendo for himself. The console hasn't worked since. Thinking I could repair it after all these years, I brought it back to the dorm, bought some rubbing alcohol, and planned to clean it out as best I could. There was one problem: Nintendo used crazy star-shaped screws to keep people like me from messing with the innards of the machine. So I did the obvious thing: I sawed the corners off of the casing and cut through the plastic screw shafts that held the two halves together. (You can see part of one of the shafts in the second picture.) I then got my first look at the befouled inner workings. Rather disgusting.
I continued disassembling, first removing the the eject lever and then the metal cover that had rusted to the side of the cartridge port. A few more screws, and I was able to extricate the main circuit board and begin cleaning. Periodically, at the request of the suitemates who were watching like a surgury audience, I would plug the board in and see if it worked. At one point we even heard some theme music. I was amazed.
I continued cleaning, alternating between q-tips dipped in rubbing alcohol and a wire brush. I removed most of the corrosion, but never managed to get anything more than random colors to show up on the TV. Eventually, the red power light quit working. I think something finally short circuited and burned out.
Now, Michael and I have a nifty piece of modern art hanging on our wall. Even though I wasn't able to get it working, I had a grand time tearing it to bits.
