You know what i'm talking about. Some consoles just spontaneously break down -- and cease to simply require just pushing a power button to play a game. And somehow we all find these crazy ways of engineering our own way to make the damn things work.

Just curious what you guys have dealt with in the past.

Unplugging it and then plugging it back in.
Bribing it with various useless trinkets. (Like a pendant or a potato chip.)
Blowing on it. Not into it but on it.

... Yeah, I really should get a new PS2.

....um.....

Well, I did have some defective game discs for my PSP once!

...nevermind.

Well, the stupidest thing I've ever done to make a console work is turn a PS2 upside down to play a psOne game, but I'm sure everyone has gone through that to get rid of disc read errors.

Also, with my old psOne controller (which I had to use on my PS2 for the first year I had it) didn't work unless you held the controller so the wire bent a certain way. That means I could never move my arms EVER or the console wouldn't recognize any input.

My personal favorite was with the NES. How you eventually needed to prop down the cartridge inside the console...with another cartridge. I think in retrospect, 'How in the hell did i figure out how to do that?' -- i think the answer was, i was eight. and determined.

But maybe that''s because i used a Game Genie, and it jacked up my Nintendo. i'unno. Stupid Galoob.

But, that controller shit sounds harsh. I thought it was bad that my laptop has to be held a certain way to Charge.

well i my xbox dosent like to open for me. if i leave a game in there it always opens but if i forget to it simply wont open. so how i get it to open is by hitting the top over the thing that opens and repetedly jamming the open buttin at the same time while praying that when it finaly dose open i dont accidently close it agin with the buttin jamming

Found that the original Playstation I had bought when it came out had a sinking head. I had to put a wad of cotton covered in mineral oil under the thing just so I could play games on it...

The PS2 AV cable connection was loose. Had to figure out ways to keep the cable stretched out in 1 direction so the plug is taut so the leads connect and the image shows up on the TV. Usually used a huge stack of heavy books to wedge the cable.

Remember how durable the Nintendo was? My dad threw it down a long flight of wooden stairs once. And it still worked! When it didn't work I would bang on it at certain areas HARD and that made it work sometimes. Also when you blow into it, you had to make sure your mouth was completely dry first, so you don't spit on the metal connections. Cuz sometimes you almost had to blow hard enough to make yourself pass out.

Shut up. It's not sexual.

When my gameboy doesn't read the cartridge, I take out the cartridge and blow a small, concentrated air blast across the connections, often moving it like a harmonica (From left to right) for both the game and the game boy. It works 90% of the time and I've even pulled off "Miracles".

That's what I used to do to my Game Boy catridges, too. Unfortunately that also ruined the save data, and it wasn't too great when it happened to Pokemon. I think I lost my only Mew that way T_T

I remember taping my genesis cord up behind itself with duck tape trying to get it to work.


My 360 when it comes on, doesn't work. It comes on and occasionally gives me a red ring with the error E 73. On the second attempt at coming on, it works perfectly. I don't know what the fuck that means. Its done that since I bought it like three months ago. Works perfect though. I usually run it for 2-3 hours, take a break for awhile, then go back into the various frays.

sweetmagicjuice last online: 3 days ago. :(

Stare at it.

I'm sure any "old school" gamer will remember the infamously unreliable NES. While most rely on thumpings, blowings, shakings, and the occasional yellings, I had developed a very different system. When the system failed to start correctly, usually the power light would blink on and off. What I discovered was that, at a surprisingly high rate, if I hit the reset button just as the light was going from on to off, it would just make the system work.

In modern times, I had to deal with just plain having a Playstation for longer than they were built to last. I'm not sure of the specifics of it, but putting it at an angle made it work, so I built an unnecessarily complex device out of legos that held it up at a constant 45 degree angle. Somehow, that made it work.

My friend had to turn his PS1 upside-down for it to read the disc.

But for me it's always TV related, not consoles. My TVs always have crappy RCA jacks in the back. You have to apply pressure for the video or sound to show up. So what I've done is wedge a chunk of plastic between the jacks and part of the TV's outer housing so that pressure is applied all the time. I just need to finally get a decent TV.