Hi there,

My NES is getting a little long in the tooth. I just boiled the connectors, and that seems to have improved things, but I get the sense it will give out at some point, and I will either need to order a new set of connectors, or take some other action.

Getting a new set of connectors doesn't appeal to me, because I've heard they can be pretty tight, and I'd worry about my games.

Part of me wonders if I should just splurge and buy a top loader. This appeals to me because I have some PAL games I'd like to play. I deactivated the lockout chip in my current NES, so some of my PAL games play (New Ghostbusters 2, Smurfs) but others don't (Prince Valiant, Elite, ect). My understanding is that they all might work in a top loader.

My question is, are the top loaders durable? My NES is currently my main gaming system, so it gets used a lot. Do top loaders hold up through frequent use, or is there a chance that after 3 years of use, it might give out on me?

Thanks for input!

There was a post in here 5 years back mentioning a link with how to properly mod the resistors on one of these:

"Noticed this was asked here a few times without being resolved.

tldr: Add five pull-up resistors to the four score.

http://www.wanderinghuman.com/blog/archives/000126.html"

But the link of course doesn't work, and though I understand how to bypass them on say a pal controller port on the NES itself, the placement of these seems more nebulous. I found the board schematic for the NTSC one.

I have also read on a site (that may have been AI generated slop for all I know) that its the value of the diodes, and they may need replaced with others instead so the board layout would be the same, but no mention of what diodes would need to replace them.

It seems many people didn't have luck simply adding a jumper wire, though they never confirmed if they did it to the right ones, or if they were eventually successful and how. Anyone have a link, pictures or a video that explains what to do? I can get a pal one for half the cost and I am handy with a soldering iron.

Ok, so this might sound made up, but a few years ago, I found a very strange SMB1 pirated cart online. It was a black 72-pin cart (so NES, not Famicom) that seemingly used the layout of the PAL/International releases of the original Nintendo black box games like Donkey Kong. Most notably, the cartridge used artwork taken from Dragon Ball (the original one, not Z) and the cart said it was for a "Pirate MK II" console.

Now, I looked up the Pirate MK II and it seems to be real and a Famiclone with multiple versions of it being known to exist such as the Bit System, Bit 70, and the brazenly titled Nintendo Action Game System which even used the actual Nintendo name and logo.

I believe I might of also saw a similar cart that was a pirated version of Ninja Gaiden.

Shout out to Kane Hodder for signing my game! My favorite Jason 🔪🔪🔪

Did/does anyone play this game? Or like this game? The music is still so creepy, I have a good nostalgic time with it even though I have no clue where to go even after all of these years, lol.

I’m trying to track down most of my childhood favorites and some are proving more difficult only due to my limited funds at the moment. But I feel these are a good start, not sure when I’ll feel at a point to stop because I keep finding some every once in a while I search randomly at Vintage Stock. I also find myself taking each shell apart and doing a deer clean on the connection terminals. Good ol’ iso clean followed by an eraser gets the contacts nice and shiny again. At first I was having trouble and bought the 72 pin connector off Amazon but it kept giving me a weird screen glitch and not completely loading the game. I did the risky bending of the OG pins back into shape and cleaned it several times the more I play games the better it seems to be at loading them up without the fidgeting of the cartridge. It’s funny because the system is from my childhood that my mom brought back to me from her storage. Sadly my 30+ games were reduced to only 4 but hey I’m still very happy I have a working classic system.

Everyone knows that battletoads is super difficult. But I’ve heard that Rare has some more super hard games on the NES that might be even harder than it.

So which one of these Rare games do you think is the hardest?

- Battletoads
- Cobra Triangle
- Snake Rattle and Roll
- RC Pro-AM
- Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship

Other than Tetris, all of these are NES games I’ve always wanted to try. As a kid I borrowed an NES from a friend for a few months and played most of the “big” titles, and I do plan to grab those too down the line. But I wanted to kick things off with these. All of them worked on first seating and the NES has no issues either! Very happy.

Found this in an old Nintendo Power. Powerline to the Pros. Did anyone actually ever phone these?It's presented like the most normal thing in the world. You're stuck on a level, you pick up the house phone, and some smiling expert in a Nintendo jacket will just tell you how to beat it.

And even then only excluding shmups insofar as they are basically autoscrollers; not 'all' shmups are autoscrollers.

Example: Fischer Price Firehouse Rescue has a speedrun, but Super Black Onyx does not.

note: by "are there any" I mean, ya, obviously the answer is yes, but that's how i'm phrasing asking for more examples.

I made the ship from the guardian legend. It took me quite a while but I quite happy with it! I haven't actually played this game yet but I was scrolling through spriters resource and it caught my eye, going to give it a shot later.

PS. if you dont know what pearler beads are they're basically a physical pixel art, you place special beads on a grid, then place a wax paper over top. Turn on your iron and melt thos3 beads until you achieve desired results

edit: Started playing so much fun !!!

Found this at a local game store I frequent. Thought it was a nice unique game to add to the collection. I’m just getting into collecting these older games that I grew up with so any suggestions on what to try and find next would be awesome. I’ll be trying to complete this game this weekend.

Does anybody remember that there used to be videos on youtube where someone had made an hilarious edit of scenes from Double Impact and inserted stuff from Double Dragon 2 The Revenge?
Now all videos has been taken down and i wish someone saw this who has the videos to upload them somewhere
They were pure gold!

Cheers!

By Christopher Lloyd and Ralph Macchio at Rhode Island Comicon this weekend! 2 hours of waiting and Christopher Lloyd was a bit surprised seeing this and Ralph Macchio knew the assignment. JSA were really surprised seeing these signed when I was having them authencated😅

Sure I have a few games that are not Nintendo but mainly these are the games that shaped by childhood. I have all of the cartridges already but I threw away the packaging (like most kids did in those days). Fast forward to this year, I would have a fit of nostalgia and went out and bought the original boxes. These are the games that I played a little too much. I am going to go out and get Contra and Super Mario Bros to complete my nostalgic fix.

So I am trying to research what the hardest NES/Famicom games are. Currently the list I have is:

1. Holy Diver

2. Battletoads

3. Ghosts 'n Goblins

4. Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (US version)

5. Silver Surfer

6. Transformers: Mystery of Convoy

7. The Adventures of Bayou Billy

8. The Immortal

9. Atlantis no Nazo

10. Adventure Island

Honourable mentions:

• Ikari Warriors (ABBA code makes the game much easier)

• Takeshi's Challenge (You can just follow a guide)

• Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones (You can just spam the special attack)

• Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels (There are 1 up tricks that make the game a lot easier)

Are there any super hard games that I'm missing? What is your ranking for the top 10 hardest NES/Famicom games?

Just lifted some pads, perhaps too much heat. Can these pads be scraped? I tried using a Hakko Desoldering gun and most solder came out easily but some just sucked the pad with it. Any idea what I can do to salvage this? I was going too install the NES RGB 5.0 mod. Thank you!

Edit: Fixed and looking good!

Got some physical copies of some new NES games. The Trial of Kharzoid is considered an Arknoidvania and has cool soundtrack. The Angry Video Game Nerd 8-Bit stars the AVG Nerd and is a Mega Man type platformer. Both are great and am happy to have them added to my collection. Anyone here tried these out?

While we're on the subject, is there any way to get a tighter fit on this system? It feels somewhat loose and I don't want to mod it or open it up because I don't have any skill with electronics. It just wobbles whenever I try to move it. Any ideas? Also any other NES games that I should try? Preferably with a save ability. I'm considering possibly getting a flash cart but I keep getting the nagging feeling that that's going to dilute it.

I recently got another controller for my NES so I could play multiplayer with my brother, however the games that we have as of now doesn’t have multiplayer (Super Mario Bros doesn’t have “traditional” multiplayer while Tetris doesn’t at all).

What multiplayer games have y’all played before that you would highly recommend? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Thank you all for the recommendations! I’ll look into the most common ones mentioned and see which ones interest me the most!