What Restoring a 30-Year-Old Nintendo Taught Me About Right To Repair
Fixing things is human nature, so why are companies so against it?
In the late 1980s, somebody bought a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from a physical store, brought it home, and presumably enjoyed it for untold years. The console, with serial number N12180601, suffered greatly in the decades to come, eventually landing on eBay in a condition that can only be described as “junk.” The seller, located in Angleton, Texas, was asking a modest price of $11.99 for the system, which was not only nonfunctional and damaged, but missing a plethora of parts.
I bought it.
Covered in dirt and grease, partially disassembled, burned by ill-placed cigarettes, missing vital internal components, and sporting bright white paint drips, the console was a mess. If your smartphone, TV, or modern game console were in this kind of condition you’d simply throw it out and buy a replacement. But the NES was built in the 1980s, back when companies didn’t care nearly as much about making money off repairs, and as such, it was salvageable with my bare minimum of technological know-how and my…
