Most people who know me are aware that I am essentially a giant geek. These same people are also aware that I make next to no effort to cover this up - I love old games consoles, so I figured it was about time to show you some of the stuff that I have and let you know about a problem I have with one particular item at the moment. Let's start of with a general overview of the consoles I currenly own.

The Wii, Gamecube and N64 are all fine consoles but they are by no means retro - I mean come on, the GC is last-gen, the Wii is practically brand-new and everyone has an N64 gathering dust in a corner somewhere. I actually sold my N64 and about 20 games several years ago, then picked up this 'limited edition' green one for about 7 pounds a year or two later. While I still like the N64 as a console, I can't really think of more than about ten 'must-have' games that were made for the system, and as such I currently own only four N64 games. Oh well, I have GoldenEye, so that makes up for it. Anyway, let's move on to some really classic consoles:

Holy crap, this photo is just awesome. From the left, we have the SNES (the best console of all time), a NES, a Mega Drive and a Master System. I've owned the SNES for years now and I got the NES off eBay about 10 months ago, but the Mega Drive and Master System were purchased at a car boot sale two days ago - I actually managed to obtain both consoles with a load of games and controllers for a tenner, which is a proper bargain. Unfortunately the Master System isn't working (curse you, car boot sale man!) so I've ordered a replacement from the Intertron.

Now I know what you're thinking - you're thinking 'well ok, you've got a lot of consoles, but where are the games?'. Ok, this isn't true, you're actually thinking 'Tom, this article is exceptionally geeky', but let's ignore this and TOTALLY LOOK AT SOME GAMES:

With the exception of the plastic Pikachus at the top, this is pretty bad-ass. However, I wouldn't really call myself a collector - sure, I have a lot of games, but they make up what I'd call a 'best of' collection. Basically if you're looking for a classic, I probably have it - games like Super Metroid, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, the first two Zelda games, Street Fighter II and Probotector are all here, plus a lot of the newer awesome games like Resident Evil 4 and Smash Bros Melee. Then again, I also have some relatively rare and exceptionally awful games, like Ghostbusters on the Master System, Time Lord for the NES and - get this - McDonald's Global Gladiators for the Sega GameGear. Holy crap, did I just say GameGear?!

That's right, I own Sega's ill-fated, early-90s handheld which attempted to push the original Gameboy out of the market. While Sega's original TV adverts purported that "Sega does what Nintendon't", let's be honest here - the GameGear failed miserably at getting rid of the Gameboy, is the size of a brick and weighs twice as much. While the colour screen and backlight are pretty cool, this beast requires SIX AA BATTERIES and lasts for about 2 hours before dying - in other words, this is the most inconvenient portable device ever made! Still, I remember being a kid and asking my parents nearly every day if I could get a GameGear for Christmas, and when I eventually got one I thought it was the best thing in the world. Interestingly enough, I used to be a Sega fan, but I 'converted' to Nintendo when I got a SNES and realised how much better it was than anything Sega had been selling me. With this said, it is probably unsurprising to hear I own some classic Nintendo handhelds:

Ok, now I really know what you're thinking - 'why do you own SO MANY GAMEBOYS?!'. This is a perfectly valid question, and the answer is that I am a giant consumer whore. Seriously, it's that simple - I had the original Gameboy, upgraded to the Gameboy Pocket when it came out, and then I got a Gameboy Colour when that came out. As to why I own two Gameboy Pockets is a bit of a mystery, but a more relevant question is why do I own a Super Gameboy? For those who don't know, this weird-looking cartridge allows you to put Gameboy games into a SNES and play them on a TV. There are some minor benefits, such as a few added colours and of course the fact you're playing on a bigger screen, but ultimately the Gameboy is awesome because it's a portable system and the thought of needing a SNES, a TV and a billion cables to play on my Gameboy is pretty pathetic.

Let's move on to a handheld I think just about everyone has heard of:

That's right, it's the PSP. I won't lie - when Sony announced this I thought it looked amazing, and I was so eager to get a PSP that I actually imported one from Japan about seven months before it came out in Europe. I thought it was going to be awesome but... it's not. Yes, the screen is incredible and yes, the system is worryingly powerful for a handheld, but what's the most important aspect of any games console? Well, the games of course, and I've found the PSP's library to be exceptionally mundane. Rather than come up with some totally unique and awesome games like those on the Nintendo DS - which I also own - the games are just continuations of older franchies done in exactly the same way, like the new Metal Gear game and bloody Jak and Daxter (bleh). Furthermore, all the extra stuff in the PSP I was really looking forward to is just pants - it's too big to use as an MP3 player (the quality is noticeably worse than an iPod too), I need to buy Sony's horrendously expensive memory cards to watch videos, and the wireless Internet explorer is horribly slow and runs out of memory after about 5 minutes. Despite these issues I still kinda like the PSP and once I actually start earning a decent amount of money I'll probably get some new games, but for now my PSP is getting used very infrequently.

So I thought I'd start by going through most of my games collection and by now you should have a fair idea of how much I love a bit of retro gaming action. However, it's not easy being an avid fan of old consoles, and I'll demonstrate this through a story that I like to call:

The NES and the blinking red light of doom

Last week I was perusing eBay looking for some old NES stuff when I came across a particularly awesome auction - some guy was selling 18 NES games along with two controllers and a power adaptor. I didn't actually need any more controllers and I already have like a billion power adaptors, but no-one else had bid on this and the prospect of owning 18 new NES games was too good to resist. I mean come on, look at this bad-ass image that was included in the auction:

Inevitably I ended up bidding for and winning all this cool stuff. 'Hoorah!', I thought, for I am a HUGE GEEK. Skip forward a few days and it all arrived, so I ran upstairs, plugged the NES in and prepared to get totally geek chic. I decided to start with a true classic - Metroid:

So I popped in the game, turned on the NES and expected greatness. What did I actually get? This:

Um... right then. I checked everything was plugged in correctly and made sure the NES was tuned properly on the TV and unsurprisingly everything was fine. I figured it was probably just this one game, so I decided to pop in another classic - the original Zelda.

Oh yeah, that's right - it's Zelda, and it's genius. I popped it in, fired up the NES, and held my breath.

WHAT A LOAD OF BALLS! Seriously, I couldn't believe it - the day I get 18 new NES games is the same day my NES decides to die on me. After making a note of problems I was having - games not working, the red light on the front of the NES flashing on and off etc - I put them all into Google and I basically found out that my NES has a broken 72-pin connector, which is what you shove all your cartridges into. How annoyed did this make me? This annoyed:

However, I hate to lose and so I thought 'I can fix this!'. After spending a good ten minutes on Google I found a potential solution that involved opening up the NES, taking out the connector and messing around with it a bit. There was no guarantee it would work, but the procedure seemed perfectly safe and so I figured I'd give it a go.

Getting the screws out was a complete nightmare because Nintendo builds consoles like impenetrable fortresses, but I eventually removed them without injury. After popping the plastic cover off I was hit in the face with air from 1985, and was presented with this:

Time to get down to business. After removing several more screws, I got the connector out and followed the Internet instructions - basically, the connector has a series of metal prongs on it which make contact with the chipboard of any game cartridge, but over time these metal prongs get bent and eventually fail to make contact with carts. This is actually why the light on my NES was blinking red - the 72-pin connector was broken and so the NES failed to register that a game was actually inserted. Anyway, after slowly bending the pins up using a tiny screwdriver, I put everything back together and gave Metroid another try.

This was it. Had my hard work paid off? Had I opened up my NES and prodded around in it with a screwdriver for no reason? Had I made the situation worse? Had I...

WHAT A PILE OF ARSE. Seriously, this is ridiculous. At the very least, the NES was still turning on and off like it had been before, so my failed repair job hadn't made the situation worse. So why hadn't the procedure worked? Well, after doing yet more Internet searching, I found some games forum where a guy was basically saying 'don't bother trying to fix the 72-pin connector, it won't work, just get a brand new one off of eBay'. So, I did - I got one off eBay for 9 quid and am waiting for it to arrive in the mail.

So, will the new connector work? Will I be able to install it without blowing up my NES? Will I be able to play all my classic NES games again shortly? Come back soon for the THRILLING CONCLUSION to this sad tale of gaming woe!