| When visiting China as a teenager in the early 90s, my brother and I decided to invest our hard-saved cash in a Micro Genius. This was a rip-off of a Super Famicom which I'd seen a Malaysian school friend play back home in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Genius There's a photo of us smiling at the counter of a department store, handing over money. We bought a couple of multi-game cartridges. 190-in-1 and 27-in-1 or something. We tested it in a Hong Kong hotel room, and briefly played a few games. Then imagine our dismay when we eventually got back to Australia and the thing wouldn't reliably load a game. We were blowing on cartridges and all that. One day, we gave it a shot up in our non-A/C, second-storey bedroom. It was a 40 deg C day, so absolutely cooking upstairs. The console worked! The games loaded! We got to play an assorted of games we'd been eagerly waiting on. We eventually decided it must be the heat and on the next day I can remember us taking it in turns with a hairdryer trying to warm the console or cartridge to get a game to start while the other person played. It might let us play for several minutes and then fail. Unfortunately, this trick didn't last for long and then the console was surpassed and the games no longer kept our interest. 30 years later, I still have the useless boxed console in my garage and can't bear to throw it out. |