[warent]

  When finishing a level, the game would reboot the console
  and restart itself with a command-line argument
  (the name of the level to start) ... into the next level. 
  Voila, the perfect(?) way to clear all memory between 
  levels.

OH MY

At 22 years old, this is one of those moments where I'm in awe of the strange issues and workarounds that existed merely ~5-10 years ago which I'll probably never have to deal with. Very funny!

[dmoy]

Maybe never had to physically blow air on a video game to make it work either, ha.

[cosarara97]

I bought a nintendo switch with zelda, and the cartridge wasn't detected the first time I put it in. Took it out, blew a bit on it, back in, working perfectly! Some things never change.

[golergka]

It's Nintendo. I wouldn't be surprised if they designed cartridges this way on purpose now.

[wging]

You'll run into today's equivalent soon enough :)

[bigiain]

Now I'm looking forward to the first website that decides it needs to restart Chrome between page changes for me...

[Gaelan]

As a web dev, I've often at least considered refreshing the page in an SPA due to some bug with client-side state—I guess that's the modern-day equivalent.

[pjmlp]

Some web sites make Chrome freeze my LG, forcing me to do an hard reboot to get my phone back, does it count?

[Cthulhu_]

Amazon's Lambda is probably similar enough.