One of the things I've noticed over the past several months of buying NES games is that a lot of them are so dirty as to be completely non-functional. I don't know if it is true or not but I just imagine people hawking off their "broken" NES games and feeling real clever that they just got rid of junk.

I ordered a pretty sizable lot of games off of eBay (10) and picked up a further 6 carts at a local used stuff store. Out of the 16 games I got, 9 of them didn't work. After some pretty heavy cleaning, I've gotten six of them working good as new and was able to get the other two "kind of working' with the Game Genie. Those two probably just need further cleaning to work glitch and genie free. The only one I'm worried about is my copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game. The label is really scuffed up and while the casing itself looks ok, I'm worried there might be damage to the contacts or the internal components. Although it was also the dirtiest game I've had so far.

At first I was tying a bit of water and q-tips and had a lot of luck picking grime up off with those. After some googling on the internet though windex was suggested to me and I've had even better luck with that getting some of these grimey games to work. I've already hit all three of my nonworking games but after I let them dry, I'll have to give it another go and hopefully everything will work.

The real shame is that one of the games I can't get working is Punch Out. I just won't be a respectable NES collector until I have a functional copy of this great game