Game Gear games DOA on arrival...

[chrishicks]

I won a lot of 15 of these and not one of them work. can you clean these the same way you do for Atari carts? or did I just buy a box of lemons?

[joeybastard]

I'm sure you can clean them just like Atari or Nintendo carts. I doubt you got 15 games that are all dead.

[chrishicks]

I popped each and every one into my GG and some all I got was static and all the others all I got was a black screen. I thought my system was going so I popped in one of my games and it loaded right up and played fine.

[MegaManFan]

I've cleaned dead GG games with q-tips and alcohol before, worked fine afterwards.

[chrishicks]

I have been scrubbing the crap out of these. all the contacts are almost completely black.

[MegaManFan]

That's definitely why they don't work then.

 

Don't feel bad. I've scrubbed a few that came out colors OTHER than black.

[chrishicks]

the black is not coming off. I have used over 6 q-tips on one game. can I try a little fine grit sandpaper on these?

[Avid Fan]

Keep scrubbing. I bought an NES Q-bert last week that needed 10 q-tips. You can also try lighter fluid or gasoline if your feeling risky

[holygrailvideogames.com]

If you can't get them to work and are going to pitch them, send them to me and I will try to get them to work. I can't believe that you would get 15 dead games unless they were in water.

[chrishicks]

I scrubbed and scrubbed but the q-tip cleaning would not work. I ended up using some fine grit sandpaper and a credit card to remove the black coating on the contacts. it was a real pain. 1 cart even had this sluge like stuff in it. it was kinda brown and was coming out in chunks when I was using the q-tips. before the sandpaper when you looked at the contacts you couldn't see them. there was only black. now they all work. hopefully they stay this way.

[MegaManFan]

Wow, whoever sold you these games ought to get a neutral on principle alone. The last time I had to spend that long cleaning a lot of carts, I wondered how the hell they got that dirty to begin with and why the hell somebody assumed they could get away with selling them to me that way. Matter of fact this could be it's own spin-off thread: "How'd they get that way?" Answers:

 

Well mah kids din't like um, so I dug me a hole and burr'd tha damn things.

 

I wrapped a towel around it and used it to apply varnish to my end table.

 

One night we got real drunk and I wanted to see if they could be deep fat fried.

 

The possibilities are endless.

*

[mechanized]

Yeah, don't let dude get away with that. A neutral comment would be very kind of you. Did he mention their condition in the description? If so, did he grossly understate the condition, or did he misrepresent the item entirely?

 

In the future, though... really try to avoid that sandpaper. If Q-Tips didn't clean it, it's because Q-Tips aren't the answer, not because they're so oxidized (or whatever the hell that junk was! ...hope you wore gloves..) that you need sandpaper, it's that you need something sturdier than Q-Tips and perhaps stronger than rubbing alcohol.

 

Me, I never use Q-Tips. They just don't compare to hemostats with alcohol-soaked cloth wrapped around the tip. Q-Tips = Weak and Fray. Cloth on a Sturdy Something = Better leverage, better rigidity, better pressure, better scrubbing.

 

Hell, even an alcohol-soaked popsicle stick is better than a Q-Tip...

[chrishicks]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

 

 

I think it could have been an honest mistake and the seller may have not known. look at their feedback. over 900 and no negs. looks like they don't sell games much.

[mechanized]

Hm... yep, probably an honest mistake.

 

In this sort of event, the best thing you can do is tell them how to assess game cartridges better in the future, that the quality of the games you received are not up to par with an average state (moderate discoloration/oxidation), how to identify the connectors in cartridges. If they currently don't test their carts, there's no need to start, but a gross examination of the condition will be quite telling. Maybe mention some basic cleaning methods.

 

Tell them their feedback speaks for itself, that you're sure it was an honest mistake, based on their apparently not dealing much with games, and tell them the feedback you leave them will be based just on how they handled the deal (which sounds like it's worth a positive) since the merchandise did work after a hefty cleaning and they simply are inexperienced in game cartridges.