It's the weekend and that means only one thing: time to play your favorite Nintendo game! You pop the cartridge into your NES, hit the power button and immediately, you're met with either a mess of scrambled graphics on the screen or a blinking light.
The solution? Take the game out, give it a good blow or two, put it back in the system and voila, everything works like magic.
Those of us that were around and playing video games in the '80s are all too familiar with this scenario. If the game didn't load properly, it's what you did to fix it - it was just common knowledge. Literally everyone knew about this "trick" even though there were no how-to videos or websites to educate us - impressive.
The only problem with the technique is that it was completely useless.
As outlined in this video from It's Okay To Be Smart, blowing into NES cartridges didn't remedy anything. No, you weren't blowing dust from the cartridge or increasing the conductivity of the metal connections. All it really did was disguise the fact that you were simply taking it out and trying it again.
In fact, blowing into a cartridge was actually bad for them as it would make the contacts rust over time. Who knew?!
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