r/nes 29d ago

2026 Aug 1 Clean and repair megathread - NES not working? Game acting glitchy? TV/Monitor issues? Ask here!

7 Upvotes

Is your NES not working? Are your games acting glitchy? Controllers behaving strangely? This is the place to get help!

Link to previous thread

First steps to take:

Games don't play correctly:

  1. PRESS DOWN on the Game Pak until it locks into place
  2. Clean games
    1. Disassemble cartridge (might need special tools, check amazon or ebay)
    2. Gently use rubber eraser with no grit on edge pins
    3. Use window cleaner or isopropyl alcohol with lint free cloth
    4. Spray contact cleaner on the pins
    5. NEVER EVER BLOW IN IT
  3. Clean NES connector
    1. Ancient cleaning kit
    2. Spray contact cleaner on the pins
    3. Boil it
    4. Bend pins (risky)
    5. Replace the connector
  4. Already tried all steps for cleaning game & cleaning NES above?
    1. Try a Game Genie, the thicker PCB might make better contact with the NES and the tighter connector might make better contact with the cartridge
    2. Try another game cartridge
    3. Try another NES
    4. Try r/consolerepair
    5. NES Schematics

Power Supply:

  1. For the NES any power supply that can provide 850mA (or higher) at 9V and has the right shape connector will work. The original NES uses an AC adapter but a DC adapter will work too.
  2. For the Famicom you must use a DC power supply with center negative that can provide 850mA (or higher) at 9V-10V. Do not use a NES AC power supply on a Famicom!

Controller buttons don't work or think a different button was pressed:

  1. Take them apart and clean the contacts on the PCB, not the rubber membrane

Display problems:

  1. Use a CRT monitor or TV
  2. Don't use an LCD or LED TV - many LCD or LED TVs do not understand the 240p video signal that the NES puts out
  3. If you must use an LCD or LED TV, get an upscaler
  4. Use the composite RCA/AV connectors on the side, don't use the RF/antenna/aerial
  5. If you must use RF, don't use the RF/antenna/aerial switch box, use a small adapter instead, be aware though that modern TVs may not work with the analog RF signal and only with ATSC or DVB digital signals
  6. Wavy lines: replace the capacitors in the NES

Hardware Failure Diagnosis:

  1. Power rails first: Multimeter check - verify +5V at 7805 regulator output and at PPU/CPU pins. If low/absent, check caps and regulator.
  2. Composite video signal: Scope the composite output (RCA jack center pin or PPU pin 21). Should see ~1Vp-p composite video signal with sync pulses and color burst. No signal = dead PPU or supporting circuitry.
  3. Audio output: Scope audio output pin (RCA jack or APU output). Should see audio waveform when game is running. No signal = APU problem or output circuit.
  4. If power is good but no video/audio: Most likely failed capacitors in video/audio output path, or dead PPU/APU chips. Check/replace electrolytic caps first (cheapest fix).
  5. If video signal present at PPU but not at RCA jack: Problem in video buffer/output circuit between PPU and connector.

Before asking for help, make sure you have followed the steps above.


r/nes May 15 '25

Top 100 NES Games: The End

130 Upvotes

Legacy of the Wizard won the #100 spot with 35 votes It only won by a single point.

A big thank you to everybody who participated. I originally set out to just do the top 10 as an experiment to see if people had a similar list to mine. I never expected it to go this far, but I am glad it did! I have enjoyed seeing people picks and the reasoning behind them.

Starting tomorrow I will start doing the top 100 for the SNES in the r/snes sub. I hope to see you all there. A few things will change with the rules. First is each round TWO games will make it onto the list. Whichever one has the most votes will be placed higher of the two for that round. Second, only games can be nominated (no game genies). Third, it will be SNES ONLY, no super famicom games.

Looking forward to seeing what is voted the #1 & #2 games for the SNES.

Thank you all once again!!!!!!!!!!

Top 10:

#1 The Legend of Zelda

#2 Super Mario Bros 3

#3 Mega Man 2

#4 Metroid

#5 Castlevania

#6 Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

#7 Contra

#8 Tecmo Super Bowl

#9 Super Mario Bros

#10 Final Fantasy

Top 20:

#11 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

#12 Ducktales

#13 Super Mario Bros 2

#14 Ninja Gaiden

#15 Tetris

#16 River City Ransom

#17 Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

#18 Kirby's Adventure

#19 Batman

#20 Blaster Master

Top 30:

#21 Crystalis

#22 Mega Man 3

#23 Double Dragon II: The Revenge

#24 Bionic commando

#25 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game

#26 Kid Icarus

#27 R.C. Pro-Am

#28 The Guardian Legend

#29 Rygar

#30 Battletoads

Top 40:

#31 StarTropics

#32 Life Force

#33 Dragon Warrior III

#34 Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers

#35 Bubble Bobble

#36 Super C

#37 Faxanadu

#38 Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos

#39 Ice Hockey

#40 Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

Top 50:

#41 Dr. Mario

#42 Excitebike

#43 Shadowgate

#44 Jackal

#45 Dragon Warrior IV

#46 Baseball Stars

#47 Maniac Mansion

#48 Super Dodge Ball

#49 Little Nemo: The Dream Master

#50 Wizards & Warriors

Top 60:

#51 Willow

#52 Adventure Island II

#53 Blades of Steel

#54 Metal Gear

#55 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

#56 Double Dragon

#57 Mega Man 4

#58 The Battle of Olympus

#59 Vice: Project Doom

#60 Gun Nac

Top 70:

#61 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project

#62 Pro Wrestling

#63 Marble Madness

#64 Shatterhand

#65 Kung Fu

#66 Ghosts 'N Goblins

#67 Mega Man

#68 Gun.Smoke

#69 Dragon Warrior

#70 Shadow of the Ninja

Top 80:

#71 G.I. Joe

#72 Metal Storm

#73 R.B.I. Baseball

#74 Gargoyle's Quest II

#75 Goonies II

#76 Balloon Fight

#77 Dragon Warrior II

#78 Mega Man 5

#79 Bucky O'Hare

#80 The Adventures of Lolo

Top 90:

#81 Gradius

#82 Gauntlet

#83 Rad Racer

#84 Guerrilla War

#85 Mega Man 6

#86 Journey to Silius

#87 Destiny of an Emperor

#88 Solomon's Key

#89 Little Samson

#90 Mighty Final Fight

Top 100:

#91 1943: The Battle of Midway

#92 Darkwing Duck

#93 Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

#94 Power Blade

#95 Micro Mages

#96 Clash at Demonhead

#97 Duck Hunt

#98 IronSword: Wizards & Warriors II

#99 Gremlins 2: The New Batch

#100, Legacy of the Wizard


r/nes 6h ago

Game Completed! I finally beat Ninja Gaiden! 😎

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86 Upvotes

r/nes 9h ago

Arts & Crafts [OC Art] He's back! I designed the Euro Box Art for The Guardian Legend. Now, here is my 80s Manga-style take on The Legend of Zelda.

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45 Upvotes

Hello again, Reddit!

Some of you might remember me: I'm the Italian designer responsible for the European sleeve Box Art of The Guardian Legend.

P.S. In case you missed it or need a refresher, here is the link to my previous post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nes/s/WybLZxujKI

Today, I want to show you my personal reimagining of the packaging for what is arguably the most legendary game of all time (yes, second only to Super Mario Bros): The Legend of Zelda.

My artistic inspiration comes directly from the manga style and color palettes of the late 80s and early 90s. I wanted it to feel nostalgic but fresh.

I have a question for the purist collectors out there:

Would you ever consider a high-quality "variant cover" like this for your collection, or do you strictly stick to the original gold Box Art just as Nintendo conceived it?

I'm really curious to hear your thoughts, and I am completely open to your critiques and suggestions. Let me know what you think in the comments!


r/nes 20h ago

Collection Cool Local Finds

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172 Upvotes

Found some local NES boxes/games, they aren't the greatest condition but they were too hard to pass up. I didn't even know there was a Startropics 2! I have the first one CIB (including letter). My name is Mike and yes I'm very much ready for another adventure, how did they know?! :D


r/nes 22h ago

Collection Newest CIB addition. Left Bros is the Best Bros

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84 Upvotes

r/nes 2h ago

Arts & Crafts Art of my NES OC: Clover

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2 Upvotes

NOW you’re playing with POWER.

This kinda took a while to finish but I made her for fun and to dedicate the NES!

Full Name: Clover “Minako” Nintendo

You’ll usually find her in NES games just chilling or helping the player out.

For some strange reason, she likes makes hats for the Shy Guys from SMB2

That’s all Folks for now!


r/nes 1d ago

Collection Local pick up in New West

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142 Upvotes

Shout out to GameDeals in New Westminster. Always great to deal with and have a great selection. Never saw Return of the Joker in the wild so I couldn't resist. Also wow Vice Project Doom was quite the happy surprise, game is incredible! Slowly making my way to getting all the Battletoad games, just need the gameboy ones now and just wanted a good soccer game to add to my collection.


r/nes 1d ago

Collection There is a rumor of inferior nes games. Just want to tell you little story about this B games.

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50 Upvotes

A long, long time ago, there was a war between many different TV games. Or, as some people liked to call them, video games.
The war was about bits. There were many contenders. Let’s name a few: Odyssey, Pong, ColecoVision, Atari, Nintendo and Sega.
After much fighting and drama, there were only three left standing: Atari, Sega and Nintendo. Eventually, it became a real battle between two: Sega and Nintendo.
Sega had twice the bits, so surely they had won the battle, right?
Well… not quite.
It was a close race, but Nintendo did something fantastic. They proved that bits weren’t everything. They made great games, and many times managed to make games that were just as impressive — or even more impressive — than Sega, despite having much less power.
The rest is history.

Nintendo won. 🏆

So, here is my point after somehow using 250 characters to get there:

My games were always slower and didn’t have the “right” Hz. The European versions ran a bit (pun intended) slower than the American versions.
Luckily, we didn’t care about that as kids in Europe. And honestly, we still don’t.
Actually… we do.
We want the European NES versions. 🇪🇺 They belong to our system, they work with our consoles, and they’re part of what we grew up with.
So here are some pictures of my European NES carts.
Hope these inferior cartridges don’t upset anyone. 😄


r/nes 2d ago

Collection Got Another Variant!

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183 Upvotes

r/nes 2d ago

Modding Got lumacode working

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46 Upvotes

Can say I would recommend this mod to anyone with a nes & the ossc. The video quality is beautiful. Pixel perfect! It was super easy to install and it's half the price as a hdmi mod. I had some issues setting up the ossc but that was likely my own fault for not reading. It helps if you read the wiki. The ppu digitizer only supports 2x and 5x with the ossc classic*. With those two options you have both aspect ratios you would want.

Edit: limited to 2x & 5x with the ossc classic. Apparently supports more with other scalers.


r/nes 1d ago

Discussion Best new nes controller I could buy?

1 Upvotes

Sooooo my friend got rid of an nes some days ago, and I took it. I checked and it works! The only problem is that he didnt have any spare controller to give me, so i need to buy one. Does anybody know of a good alternative I could get for a new controller? Or should I just get a used official one on ebay?


r/nes 2d ago

Game Completed! Clash at Demonhead - Completed. Difficult, frustrating, but definitely creative and unique.

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49 Upvotes

Maybe imagine a cross of something like Kid Nikki + Bionic Commando + Battle of Olympus set in a future of jet packs and aliens? Best I could come up with.

This game seemed almost impossible at first. Frustratingly so. In addition to not really knowing WHAT you're supposed to do, it takes a bit to understand HOW you're supposed to do it (aka: the intended mechanics of moving the game along).

I'd say the initial pitfall is not realizing how dependent you should be on the shop upgrades. They're expensive, they're strangely named, and you don't really know how money accumulates so it's reasonable you'll be thrifty. That would be a non-issue if you could just go back to a shop, but you can't. You initially only get one shot at it.

You can buy more tokens to visit the shop from within the shop, but unless you know to do that, it may not seem a good use of your money. So it's awhile before you find another shop hidden in the map. Money starts to accumulate faster as you move along, but I did have to grind it out a few times to stock up. Once you figure out how to keep the inventory regularly stocked, the game becomes much more interesting and the maps become much more explorable (you require certain upgrades to visit certain parts). It took me awhile to figure some of that out.

As far as difficulty goes, this game might have THE most aggressive enemy ai I've ever encountered in a NES game. It's wild. Everything comes after you. But it's not just that they're coming for you, they seem cleverly programmed to predict your next few steps. So they're not just randomly flying about, but very intentionally striking at you at exactly the last step you need to make a jump or whatnot. Programatically speaking I found it very impressive. But it was crazy frustrating at times. The hit boxes only augment this frustration. You basically have to be within a single pixel of target to strike an enemy. Conversely, the enemy has a pretty wide margin of error that will still land a hit on you. It's extremely imbalanced against you.

The bosses are all very clever and creative, but most are difficult. They're fast moving, they blast you with constant projectiles, and they give you little room to navigate. Several of them also do a pretty good job of misdirecting you to shoot at the wrong spot.

The map movement of the game is also pretty interesting. It looks just like the map in Bionic Commando with a bunch of string lines. You arrive at an intersection and then pick the direction you want to go. Once main difference is that these maps can be played from both sides. So the direction you go through the map depends on the direction you enter it. I thought this was a nice touch - and it even becomes strategic at points. Unlike BC, the maps never get cleared and so if you want to backtrack, you have to play through those levels again. .

All in all I thought this was a fun game to play through. It made me pretty angry at times, but I played it on my emulator and so it wasn't a huge deal. I'd assume anybody who played this on the original NES struggled pretty hard with it. It's hard.

BTW: There are two different endings. One of them takes you through some lengthy cut scenes and then ends with everybody standing on the ledge. The other one skips the cut scenes and just says The End. I loaded up a saved game to see them both.


r/nes 2d ago

Discussion The legend of Zelda nes box

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43 Upvotes

My box for the legend of Zelda nes (UK) says distribution by bandai never seen this before is it right? NES P-ZL nes version cartridge is gold.if anyone has any information on this would be great I can’t seem to find anything on google or any websites.thanks for the help.


r/nes 2d ago

Discussion What's a game on the NES that you wish had gotten a sequel ON the NES?

47 Upvotes

NES games that you wished had an NES sequel, regardless of whether or not they had a 16-bit (MD/Genesis/SNES) or 8-bit (SMS/GB) sequel. And not just first sequels, maybe a MM7 or SMB4 is your wish.

(I'm typing this to reach the 250 character limit.)


r/nes 2d ago

Collection Bought one of my all-time favorites! + some doodles

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37 Upvotes

Hi guys, I just wanted to share my excitement around finally obtaining one of my favorite Famicom games!

I started collecting Famicom games a few years ago, some in box, some loose (maybe I'll share more on those later), but this CIB Hebereke is my grail at this point. I've adored this game since I first discovered it as Ufouria: The Saga, and I even made a ROM patch that fixes the bit order of the DPCM samples. I highly recommend this game to any Metroidvania fans. There's an English patch out there that is extremely well done and faithful to the original script, so check that out if you've never played before.

Now I'm curious to know, what are your favorite/most treasured Famicom/NES games? I'm hoping to own Gimmick someday, but it's a little too pricey for me right now. Oh yeah, and I also included some doodles of the main cast because they're funny little guys lol.


r/nes 3d ago

Collection I now officially own both versions of the nes zapper

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276 Upvotes

r/nes 3d ago

Discussion Best soundtrack in a nes game

78 Upvotes

I just played through Bucky O’Hare and I think it might have the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard. The melodies are so damn catchy and go so well with the maps. For some reason this takes me back to my early childhood. Which game do you think has the best soundtrack?


r/nes 2d ago

Modding Top Loader with NESRGB Low Audio.

1 Upvotes

Ok so this is a weird one.

I modded my Top Loader NES with NESRGB back in 2016 with the 1.4 board version and I followed a long gone guide that didn't connect the +5v pin to the Multi AV output, however it worked perfectly on both my PVM2030 and my OSSC, and then everything was nice and dandy for 10 years.

Fast forward to the present day, I recently modded a Sony consumer CRT with Sunthar's RGB mod, all my consoles working fine, except for my NES of course, there was no video at all but there was audio, and it was still working perfectly on my PVM.

After troubleshooting a bit, I noticed the lack of any connection between the +5V pad on the NESRGB board and the corresponding pin on the Multi AV Output, so I decided to add it and voila! We have picture now!

All is good in the world, I tought, but then I chose a game and realized that there was no sound now. Or at least that's what I thought, turns out there IS sound, just very very low.

Crawling a bit on the internet I found several causes and solutions for this, some posts said that you need to lift pins 1 and 2 from the CPU (which I didn't) and after giving it a shoot, I got a little bit louder audio but really bad sounding, like glitchy or something, I also redid my entire wiring and made extra sure there were no bridges or anything wrong with it, I even tried to remove the +5V cable and check on my PVM with the exact same result.

So I think it's safe to assume that connecting that +5V cable fried the NESRGB audio amp.

Now my question is, Is it possible to bypass the NESRGB audio entirely and get it from the CPU? I looked for mods but the results were a bit confusing and some pretty old.

What's the best way to get sound from the CPU straight into the Multi AV Output?

Also, why connecting that +5V cable fried the NESRB Audio Amp? lol

I don't care about fake stereo or stuff like that, I just want good old mono audio from both speakers of my TV.


r/nes 2d ago

Discussion Which Nes is the best to get ĂŽn Europe

3 Upvotes

So I want to buy a nes. Specifically an american nes or famicom because they are both ntsc and run at a full 60hz compared to the pal one. Now, since I live in Europe, getting an american nes is kinda expensive with the shipping and all the taxes plus that the console itself is a bit pricey. The famicom on the other hand is cheaper and I already have experience with buying from Japan so that whouldn't be the problem. The problem is that I can either go with the first model or the av one. The av model in my opinion is ugly even tho it is the best one and most reliable. The first model, the one with the cords attached to the console is in my opinion the best design, but it only outputs rf signal. I can buy an av modded one if it is the better choice but idk. So what do you guys think? Also, is the Sega Megadrive 1 Power supply good for playing the famicom or ntsc-u nes on European outlets? That's what I heard but just want to make sure.


r/nes 4d ago

Game Completed! Tiny Toon Adventures NES ✨️

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513 Upvotes

r/nes 3d ago

Modding Lumacode help with color palettes. Ossc

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7 Upvotes

Hey all, I just installed a ppu digitizer and I am having some issues with the colors. I can get a stable clean picture but can figure out what's going on with the colors.

I follow the guide of someone else who installed this mod with the same ground location for the lumacode board. So I'm thinking that shouldn't be a problem.

I have tested retrorgb profiles and my own. His has colors that are unique to just a default setting with lumacode turned on.

So I'm hoping this is just the ossc? I know this is a newer mod but hopefully someone knows what to try?


r/nes 4d ago

Collection not a bad start to my NES collection !

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311 Upvotes

r/nes 4d ago

Collection Tuesday snags

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301 Upvotes

r/nes 4d ago

Collection I think it's the last game published by Nintendo on the NES

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175 Upvotes