Watch any internet video on the subject to see an example of such strange game behavior.
Why does this happen?
EDIT: oh my this blew up didn’t it? Thanks for all the replies!
In: Technology
I accidentally tilted my MM cartridge once…
It had no visible effect until I started a new file and gained control of Link.
He had an Ocarina in every single item slot.
Oohhh god, You just unblocked a horrible memory of mine. Once while playing Zelda majora’s mask, i was hitting the bell that’s above the inn, just for fun (?)… then, rain starts falling and, at the same time that the thunder sound effect cames up, i moved the console, with my feets by accident, causing that intermitence, the above created an effect like if link was hitted by the thunder… BUT LINK STARTED TO GLITCH HORRIBLE, the half of his body was blinking and making a 90° angle, and the audio sounded like when you try to find the right angle of your damaged headphones. All of this was before that [BEN.wmv](https://youtu.be/iGOJmdxdjeA) creepy pasta. You can imagine my face when i saw those videos, i was like “omg i think i meet BEN:(” i was 8 at that time
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Unlike other consoles, the N64 *doesn’t* run any code directly off the cartridge – instead it copies it to memory and runs it from there. During normal gameplay, the console may not be reading from the cartridge at all. In theory, you could just remove the cartridge entirely and keep playing the game normally, with only a few glitches occurring whenever the game tries to load some extra data from the cart.
The only reason you can’t do this is because of a pin on one side of the console. That pin exists for the sole purpose of detecting whether the cartridge was removed, and shutting off if so. By titling the cart, though, you keep this pin connected (to prevent this shutdown) but disconnect the other pins so that data can’t be transfered from the cart anymore. The game keeps running thanks to the code in RAM, but all attempts to load additional data from the cart return garbage.
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There are many pins inside the cartridge that “talks” with the console properly. If you tilt the cartridge even by a little bit, the piece of information/memory will not be processed properly. It like taking away a part of the brain that helps you remember to talk properly. The more pieces you tilt or “part of the brain you take away,” the more weird things it would do or “talk more and more like baby until you don’t understand anymore.”
The only cartridge you are allowed to tilt is Superman 64. No one cares if that gets ruined. Heck, throw it out a window.
Inside of the cartridges, there are gold pins that conduct electricity (gold is highly conductive).
This electricity carries information. These gold pins force the electricity to flow in a certain direction at certain times, if they are fully connected.
But, you probably know that electricity can “jump” between two conductive points, if the current is strong enough to bridge the gap. When tilting the cartridge, you create a gap, but the electricity is still strong enough to make it across. However, the electricity doesn’t have something to control where it goes, as it has to leave the gold pin to “jump” to the console receivers. Because of this, the information can be lost or scrambled, and sometimes can flow down the wrong pin receivers. This is why you get graphical/audio errors.
This can damage the console and the cartridge, although it is unlikely as the current flowing isn’t very strong. Just know that if you are wanting to tilt a cartridge, do with knowing the risk that you may break either the cartridge, the console, or both.
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