No kidding, I don't have to jam an extra cartage into the slot to keep the game down, or fiddle with it for 10 minutes before I can even get the game to work properly. Sometimes I don't wanna keep my battery backed up games. Diggin a dentist pick into the inner workings of your electronic device is a lot less irritating then waiting a couple days for the mail. You crazy kids should pop the rose lenses out of you glasses, haha.
Solution: One new NES pin header off ebay, One small bottle of brasso, One small bottle of rubbing alcohol, One tri-hex opener from
www.dealextreme.com (<$3)
The problem is the pin headers and the cartridges themselves on the NES actually gathered small metal rust and various bits of debris, that system is f'ing 25 years old. I was on an NES kick not too long ago, so I watched a tutorial on how to do this, and its SUPER easy.
1.) Using a regular screw driver, open up your NES and replace the PIN header
2.) Using the tri-hex, open up your NES cartridge
3.) Mix a small bowl of rubbing alcohol 50/50 with water
4.) Apply brasso directly to cartridge pins, use a rag to rub away the dirt. The pins will look 1000x shinier
5.) Dip your rag in the 50/50 water and wash/dry away the remaining brasso and the pins
I GUARANTEE this will fix your old NES, I have 100% first boot on my NES. The hardware on the NES is extremely simple, the RF unit is well protected, the 6502 chip has like 3 layers of plastic and metal before anything could hurt it. The only flaw was the PIN header, which the SNES and N64 fixed later.
The 360 is a piece of garbage when it comes to warranties/recalls. I have the Halo edition and so far no red ring, but I don't play it as much as I imagine some people here do. It also has the 45nm chip, which supposedly stays cooler.
But even the Gamecube was a beast, I mean how many people do you know with a failed Gamecube?? They even went to the trouble of writing the data backward on those tiny discs to make the laser last 10x longer.
But.... this is a 100% derail. Thanks Derek for front paging this! From a technical stand point, the reason why this game is only a single screen and rather simple is because platforming is hard to do on the 6502. You have to dynamically update your tiles, use the scrolling registers, AND manage to stay within the vblank limit. If you play the old Megamans on NES, you'll notice they ONLY scrolled horizontally, and did a zelda style transition when they went vertical.