A few years ago a clever, witty, and shockingly beautiful Nintendo Life writer had to spend a few boring days trawling numerous websites searching for a brand new and eye-wateringly expensive wafer-thin HDTV with which to replace their ageing and sadly then only semi-functional slightly less wafer-thin HDTV. This new triumph of technology and installment-based payment plans was even more HD than previous, lesser, HDs, and everyone in the house was very happy with this newest iteration of the rectangular entertainment window.
Everyone except me, Ms. What-do-you-mean-1994-was-27-years-ago?, that is.
This new TV — the same as just about all new TVs for sale these days — had finally ditched any and all non-HDMI inputs, meaning anything older than an Xbox 360 just wasn't going to work, and I have a lot of consoles older than an Xbox 360. With no practical reason to keep these magical boxes of silicon and plastic sitting under the television and nowhere else to store them inside the house, I carefully wrapped my old consoles up in a cocoon of thick plastic bags and stored them in the garage before trudging back inside and begrudgingly trying to adapt my old ways to the 'new' millennium. I wept at the price of fancy image upscalers. I bought myself one of those teeny-tiny official PSOne screens so I could play Vagrant Story in a quiet corner of the living room, hissing at anyone who passed by about the good old days. I embraced handhelds, miniaturised reissues of Nintendo hardware, and the Retro Freak.
I carefully wrapped my old consoles up in a cocoon of thick plastic bags and stored them in the garage before trudging back inside
But in spite of all my sincere efforts, it never felt the same, and I knew it. There was only one thing for it: I had to clear out a shelf somewhere in the house, buy a really old CRT TV to plonk on it, and do this properly. One eBay purchase and 2-3 business days later and all that was left to do was venture back into the garage to retrieve the beloved hardware I'd left in there.
I don't go in the garage often or for very long because it's full of spiders and as far as I'm concerned spiders belong on the receiving end of a Resident Evil flamethrower and nowhere else, but I assumed everything would be just fine. After all, amongst all the old paint tins and forgotten screwdrivers there was a small rusted bottle of sewing machine oil on one home-made shelf that's been in there so long it probably predates sewing machines themselves. If that can survive for as long as it has in the garage, then surely my plastic-wrapped consoles would be just fine.
A small rusted bottle...
It was cold and damp in the garage. No, not damp — wet. There were puddles of water on the concrete floor and heavy drips of water falling from what I now realised was a pretty shabby roof; a miserable combination of the extreme cold and heavy snowfall. The sorry state of this ramshackle building wasn't something I'd noticed before — nothing really happens to a few plastic plant pots and the broken remains of an antique fishing rod if they get wet when you're not looking. Old consoles, already operating decades past their prime, is another matter entirely.
I took my consoles back inside, wondering with a heavy heart if sending a flaming longboat down the local river was a bit much for a retro funeral
The plastic defences I had so glibly assumed were safe and secure when I put them away now looked flimsy, dusty, and had enough water sitting on them it needed pouring away before I took my consoles back inside, wondering with a heavy heart if sending a flaming longboat down the local river was a bit much for a retro funeral. The bags made their precious cargo feel a grim "oh no" sort of wet-cold, and as I opened them up I realised there was a very simple reason for that: my consoles were wet and cold. A soggy Japanese Nintendo 64 lay on the floor next to a moist Super Famicom and an import Saturn that appeared to be covered in a fine coating of a disgusting substance; something that seemed to imply the word "spores" would be involved in there somewhere.
I'll be honest with you: as I took in the damp and dirty devastation that lay before me I thought about giving up and binning the lot. Doing that had to be better than plugging them all in one by one, waiting for them to load up a treasured favourite... and watching them all fail. Luckily for me the same sensible adult thinking that got me into this mouldy mess just so happened to be the same sensible adult thinking that insisted I should at least check for sure - at least I'd have tried to save them if nothing else. So, armed with enough kitchen towel to mummify an elephant and every spray, cleaner, and can of compressed air in the house, I set about scrubbing everything clean, wiping surfaces dry, and poking cotton buds into plastic vents. After much work my consoles and cables were finally dry and free of dust, things I hoped were dust, and a vile film of grime I hope I never see again. The plastic shells were definitely more discoloured than they had been when they went in, but that's a job for another day.
All that was left was to turn them on.
They worked! They all worked. First time, somehow. And not "they just about turn on after much swearing and crying" work either, but the "we're back in business" sort of work!
I'm still not quite sure I believe it myself, and I can feel my arms ache a little after the extensive Virtua Cop "test" session I just had. My games look fantastic, and even though my consoles look like an idiot left them virtually unprotected in a leaky garage for far too long, I've learned some valuable lessons: Garages are for cars and rusty old bottles of sewing machine oil; it's always worth making space in your home for an old TV; and I'm not as clever I as think I am.
Console Storage Tips Born From Bitter Experience and The Benefit Of Hindsight:
- Not the garage. NEVER THE GARAGE. GARAGE? NO.
- Avoid anywhere subject to absent-minded neglect and extreme seasonal temperature changes such as — and I'm just pulling one random example out of thin air here — a garage. Even a sealed and dry environment can drip with condensation in the cold and cause mould to grow on things mould should never grow on.
- If you do need to put things in long-term storage use thick plastic boxes with a proper click-seal lid, like the one I inexplicably stored a Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles guide book and a tangle of useless old cables in. But not my SNES.
- And that's because it's cheaper in the long run to buy good quality spider-free storage boxes than it is to replace or feverishly clean several distressingly moist and no longer manufactured consoles.
- Further reading: Feature: Your Beloved Games Console Is Slowly But Surely Dying
Comments 39
When I moved cross country I packed my entire game collection into sealable plastic boxes and refused to even allow them to go into climate controlled self-storage; instead created a wall in the spare bedroom (had to keep curtains permanently drawn as they were next to the window).
To this day I check the spare bedroom to check all is well in the vastly reduced wall.
Man, do I have stories about old consoles and horrible, bizarre storage conditions. I won’t regale, but I’ll say I’m sure glad I haven’t lived life as an old video game console
All my consoles are in dry places!
This is the way.
My original NES was kept in a bad state, and would no longer read games. I eventually paid around $10 to get a new cartridge-reader-slot-thing with gold-plated pins. As I'm sure you can tell by my choice of descriptive words, I have no idea what I'm doing inside of a consoles hardware, but even I was able to have it done in a breeze within a matter of minutes. Now it works better than I ever.
Oh damn. There was a game about repairing and cleaning old PCs for Switch which sounded really interesting but I never picked it up. I've also forgotten what it was called
I keep my Switch Lite in an official Nintendo soft bag just to keep away from dust while I'm not using it.
And I always remember to wait at least half an hour to use electronics that has been out in cold weather. (I had a brand new Commodore 64 going down on a frosty day in 1984 after taking it home and starting it up without waiting).
I don't even store my old consoles away away. I still keep them in nice boxes in my room. That way they're always with me and safe.
@Kimimi I don't think you mentioned whether you opened up all the consoles and controllers to clean the plastic inside and the circuit boards. If you didn't then I strongly suggest you do because if there is mould on the outside then there will undoubtedly be mould on the inside too.
Use 90+% isopropyl alcohol and soft towels and ear buds (q-tips) to clean the circuit boards. You'll get a feel for what tool is best for which bit of the circuit board. You can buy a bottle off Amazon fairly cheaply
I'd spray a surface spray that contains bleach on to a paper towel and run it up and down the cables too. Black cables hide grime well. Hold the cable by the end of the actual cable and not the connector as you'll be holding it quite tightly and you don't want to rip the connector off.
And nobody should use those green washing up pads on the exterior of the console because they will scratch the plastic up. But they can be used for removing rust from the metal RF shielding. Mix some bicarbonate of soda with water until it's a kind of sloppy thick paste and go to town on that shielding. Rinse it off, dry and reassemble! The shielding can be sharp on the edges though so be careful, I ended up with sliced up hands the first time I did it
Best of luck with your consoles! I've only said all this because I have left some consoles in damp cold areas and had to deal with similar issues
here is some new nintendo life can cover lol.........atelier ryza 2 preorder bonuses are not being received and koei tecmo wont help anyone get it either they keep saying contact your supplier from where you preorder and the supplier keeps saying contact koei tecmo lol
Ain't not many things worse than wet dust, I can tell ya that!
Do you know the very worst thing that you can do when putting your old handheld consoles into storage? Forget to take the batteries out. Man alive... it is a hideous (and corrosive) mess.
A colony of ants took up residence in the shielding foil of my Commodore 64. There were actual ant mazes in it.
But the C64 survived and still worked once the fly spray had dried. Those chunky old machines were built tough.
My uncle's SNES was in the basement, but I brought it up to the guest bedroom where it will stay.
@Ooyah I hear you! Vinegar does wonders in those situations.
You know what's the worst? The switch has such a good library of nintendo's history and even Sony's with a lot of games yet I don't see mine lasting much longer. I've had it since launch and I've taken pretty good care of it it just is not a resilient console at all. The battery life sucks and it seems to run slower. Maybe I need to buy a new one or maybe I need to replace the battery? Point is, up until now, I haven't been worried about my nintendo not working. But with the switch? It's still in it's prime and in worried about it kicking the bucket just from use. And I'm not on it 24/ 7 either. Point is, every nintendo handheld but the switch has been known for its insane resilience. My dsi xl I got has been banged around more often then possible and it still has a great battery life, no problems, no screen issues, and not even a significant scratch. The switch has seen half the playtime and it is already looking like it's going to have to stay in the dock forever from now on...
Is there any way to restore the original grey of the SNES? Mine has turned smoker-lung yellow and it isn't due to any smokers in the house.
@BreathingMiit you will never kill a c64 unless you take a hammer to it they are seriously bulletproof 😀
Vacuum seal them for storage. Then box that up.
Modern consoles probably are not as durable. The retro consoles are high quality and made in Japan.
Several of my older Nintendo consoles and handhelds have been shipped from London to New York to Hong Kong then back to London again. They all still work!
All our games and consoles are in a their own room.
And everything should be fine there, I clean the whole room every week and replace a small (non electric) humidifier to keep the humidity stable (between 50%~70%, it's difficult in this old appartement and a electric one wasn't any better than the non eletric one)
And in the summer I try to het rid of the heat, because old appartement so it becomes easily hot here (35 degrees in the summer unless I open the windows)
And airco is not a option.
All things aside, I do often a check up if nothing strange happened to the games/consoles.
@Rypopo The yellow is a sign of the degredation of the ABS platic caused by UV and heat (not Bromine as commonly thought) Don't just use Hydrogen Peroxide, as this will further weaken the plastic - and the effect doesn't last!
Long story short - there's no good way ... So just embrace your yellow SNES!
Most of my stuff is in the loft. We do have a new garage/outbuilding that’s insulated, dry and has a radiator, so it will all live in there someday (when we convert the loft into a bedroom and I have time to move everything).
While the loft is dry, it’s subject to extreme temperature changes. But there’s literally nowhere I can store them until I have time to move everything.
So I store everything in plastic tubs, and all games are stored individually in plastic grip seal bags, each with a silica gel pouch! I have no idea if they help, but I’m determined to do everything I can to help them survive, even if it makes me look crazy (and now sound crazy as I write about it on the internet for everyone to read!).
You can buy like a huge bag of silica gel packets online for like $9, I throw them in my shoes, my toolbox, anything that can get wet or exposed to temperature.
If someone spills a drink on a joycon, it goes in a freezer bag with 3 packets overnight and it fine and dandy one day later
@GrailUK I'd definitely take a game over the reality! Some of the things I've seen over the years fixing them for people eurgh...
Fantastic article great read. @Ooyah good advice happened to some Wii remotes of mine it’s awful. But lesson learned xx
my snes is like 9 different colors, and that's how i like it
@AndrewR shudder
All my old consoles still work and some of them have had a tough life but they keep on keeping on.
Unlike my Switch which was broken brand new straight out of the box, yes, my brand new console needed fixing from day one.
I didn't have it for 8 weeks while they fixed it, a brand new console.
Ridiculous.
A Switch wouldn't even last a week in that garage
I am glad articles like this exist, but for me, this is just common sense. I would never store my stuff anywhere near moisture.
@Marchop thanks for the advice!
Beautifully written article! As many of my retro consoles, controllers and CRTs as possible were bought brand new & are hooked up in a temperature and humidity controlled cellar - now that’s OCD. I was determined that all the kit would outlast me..
Call me astutely intuitive, I thought it was blindingly obvious to never store electronic equipment in a garage or any pseudo-outdoor environment.
I just had to buy a new tv as well, my old hd plasma started ghosting images. I ended up getting a Samsung q90t because it has good reviews and ranked well for video games as it has very low lag time. Works great for my switch, Wii U and Xbox one. But it doesn't play nice with my Framemeister. The framemeister works with it until I put the tv into game mode (which is the only way to get low lag time) and then the tv gives me an error. So I can only play my retro consoles on it with game mode off with like half a second of lag which makes the majority of games unplayable. So now I don't know what to do. I could still play them on my CRT, but man I really want to be able to play them on the big screen all nice and pretty the whole reason I have a framemeister. This really bites.
Edit: I just updated the firmware of the framemeister from 2.03 to 2.04 and now it works on my new TV!
Yes! I'm saved!
What’s this about my consoles?
I've got to be honest in that I'm surprised anyone who cares about their electronics at all would think storing them in a building like the one you describe would ever be a good idea. You make this garage sounds like a moldy, nasty, ramshackle of a building that barely ever gets attention paid to it.
Growing up, my father was very serious about taking care of your things and didn't just preach, but led by example. His garage was where he kept his prized show car. And said garage was clean enough to live in - if you could stand the smell of motor oil 24/7. And our house was always very clean. Not germaphobe levels, but tidy. And he, like I have turned out to be, was a collector that borders on hoarding, never wanting to let things go. But even if it couldn't be displayed, things were always kept neatly boxed in a safe location. Things we box up and put away should, and usually do, come out of the box just as nice as the day we stored them.
So it's because I was raised this way that it always baffles me when I hear about people storing their "precious" things this way. I'm really glad you managed to save your consoles. Thanks for sharing your story!
Glad the consoles were okay! I had to have my retro systems boxed up for 4-5 years and just got them back out and hooked up to a CRT this past month myself. I was so relieved that everything still worked, though mine were all well-wrapped during storage.
I am also not sure the Switch will survive as long as my NES, N64 and the others. I have seen YouTube videos where people tried to destroy them(Switch) and they could not but the real issue is build quality of the ancillaries and third party offerings. At least we have 8BITDO.
@Yorumi hi yes there is! We offer it as a part of a Retro Console Service which includes capacitor and voltage regulator replacement and a deep clean on all retro consoles. Check out Console Refresh on eBay. Our Retro Console Service eBay listing will go live this week. And we plan to launch our company properly with website etc end of March!
Tap here to load 39 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...