Blowing Into Your Nintendo Cartridges Didn’t Actually Help

Save your breath.

1. Back when our video games came in cartridges…

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2. …we would blow into them if they didn’t work.

Source: nintendolife.com

3. But it turns out blowing into a Nintendo cartridge doesn’t actually help.

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4. See, we thought we were blowing off dust, when in fact we were just lining the cartridge with a layer of moisture.

Source: videogameconsolelibrary.com

5. And long term, that probably wasn’t the best thing.

Source: sodahead.com

6. Someone even did an experiment to see the effects of blowing on the cartridges.

Source: digitpress.com

7. And it only took a month for this to happen.

Source: mentalfloss.com

8. So imagine what happened after doing that for years.

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9. Even Nintendo says not to do it.

Source: nintendo.com

10. The reason cartridges wouldn’t work wasn’t necessarily because they were dirty…

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11. …but because they had these pin connectors that wouldn’t connect with the hardware sometimes.

Source: technipages.com

12. So just taking the cartridges out and putting it in again until it worked was all you had to do.

Source: theverge.com

13. But, whatever, blowing on it made us feel better.

Source: nintendo.com

You can read more about the effects of blowing on cartridges here.