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Everyone knows about the issue of dirty connectors causing corrupt graphics/games that doesn't start etc.
Could this behaviour be "emulated" just for fun?
What's the technical reason for graphics becoming corrupt? Does a dirty connector "scrambles" the data to become something else or does not transfer any data at all (perhaps both?).

Force any CHR A or D line high and that's what happens on a bad connexion.

Or PRG lines too, or reset the system constantly after about 1 to 2 seconds, whatever it takes for the blinking screen of death.

I once got connection glitches that broke the MMC3 scanline counter, which made the ending to Gremlins 2 split the screen in opposite directions, then it stopped at a certain place. Graphics still looked fine though.

Well once I got FF3 "miraculously" switch to horizontal mirroring and all graphics were f**ed up. I don't know how this could have happened.

The most mysterious thing was that I had a game (it was Battletoads & double dragon I think) freeze whenever I hit the TV (and I was able to repeat it a few times cause I didn't believe it at first). This is completely unexplainable rationally, but I think the hit somehow affected the CHR lines' connexion and prevented a sprite 0 hit.

There's so many weird possibilities. A couple of the funniest glitches I've seen from bad connections were in games by Tecmo. In Tecmo Bowl I encountered a debug mode where it displayed a memory dump in hex on the screen. In Tecmo World Wrestling, during a 2-player match, the background color blue became black (making the ring black) and only the triangle channel was playing music, all the others were silenced. But I forget if it crashed or went back to normal after that match was over.

could be fun :)
didn't some C64 emulator emulate these kind of behaviors?

The best is when you're playing a game for hours and it's working perfectly, then it suddenly freezes.

Castlevania PRG0. Grim Reaper.

I remember beating the last boss in Bucky O'Hare at my cousin's house, and right before the ending started to roll, his dog ran into the power cord and jiggled the console. That stuck note was like a dagger, piercing my hard-earned sense of victory.

blargg wrote:The best is when you're playing a game for hours and it's working perfectly, then it suddenly freezes.

Especially when after resetting you figure out that all your saves are erased (happened me once in FF3 thanks god I was early in the game and now I always uses all 3 slots for saving so if one gets erased I have the others).

Castlevania PRG0. Grim Reaper.

This is a bug, not a bad connexion. What blarg says happened to me a couple of times, without a doubt due to a connexion on the PRG side that suddently stop to work.

Bregalad wrote:This is a bug, not a bad connexion.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. I did mistake it for a dirty connector problem when I was a kid, though...

Well in fact there is no way you could tell without using (PRG0) with an emulator and figures out it crashes too.

BMF54123 wrote: I remember beating the last boss in Bucky O'Hare at my cousin's house, and right before the ending started to roll, his dog ran into the power cord and jiggled the console. That stuck note was like a dagger, piercing my hard-earned sense of victory.

Same thing happened to me, but it was Final Fantasy, and just moments before fighting Chaos. It even erased the save! I hope no one ever emulates the wagging dog tail reset.

oRBIT2002 wrote:Everyone knows about the issue of dirty connectors causing corrupt graphics/games that doesn't start etc.
Could this behaviour be "emulated" just for fun?
What's the technical reason for graphics becoming corrupt? Does a dirty connector "scrambles" the data to become something else or does not transfer any data at all (perhaps both?).

I have a number of issues with my games freezing and/or not loading. SO frsutrating!

My old SNES had some cartridge conenctor issues. There was a hair or something in the cartridge connector and games would frequently power up to a blank screen, and erase the saved games in the process. I think I've gotten it clean, as it now works fine all the time.