Tips/advice for cleaning games.

I finally took the plunge and bought the Retron 5. I was thinking about buying a SNES, but figured for what I'd pay, I could get a new system for a little more. Got it for $120 shipped from Newegg. Anyways since I plan on acquiring all sorts of games in the coming months from eBay/flea markets, which is the best way to clean cart games. So NES, SNES, Sega, and such. Thanks in advanced for your help.

You want to check out this thread:

https://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/330491-cleaning-snes-carts/

That sounds a good deal !

Cartridge - Q-Tip and High % Rubbing Alcohol... I'd say 90% of higher which can be bought at pharmacies.. you want it to evaporate quickly

Optical Media - Static Free Monitor Wipe, or Eye Glass Cleaner + Microfiber eye glass wipe.

I actually read an interesting article on Kotaku related to this subject.

Relabeling Vintage Cartridges

I agree with Jiryn on the cleaning advice. I use a Q-Tip and rubbing alcohol for cleaning the cartridge contacts. I will use a paper towel and a cleaning agent like 409 for scrubbing down the plastic. You have to be real gentle with the labels. Some of them don't react as well to cleaning agents, or even water, and you might end up with bleeding ink.

The interesting thing about this article is that it demonstrates replacement methods for dealing with damaged labels. With modern printing technology, as well as the accessibility of open-source software, cooking up your own replacement labels for classic cartridges is more viable than ever before. While I understand and appreciate the argument of maintaining authenticity in a collection, I also like the idea of cooking up new replacement labels, especially for cartridges where the labels are noticeably damaged.

Depends how dirty the carts are.

Standard clean would be alcohol and Qtips. Even though I have become quite the fan of the 1up cards.

Any heavy oxidization, I open the cartridge and do some brasso on a qtip. Followed by alcohol on a fresh qtip to clean that up.

Anything heavier than that is generally toast.

I had one game that was crazy bad, and was pretty much trash so I tried very high grit (800 i think) sand paper and it got it clean enough to work. That was a throw away cart however otherwise so I wouldn't suggest it.

NES games seem to be the only games that usually need cleaning in my experience. Firm cotton Q-tip and alcohol does wonders

Invicta 61 said:

You want to check out this thread:

topic/330491-cleaning-snes-carts/

Click to expand...

Thanks for linking this - a lot of useful stuff there!