Limited Run Games have just sent an email to people who purchased the Nintendo Entertainment System games Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland and PioPow, informing them not to use the cartridges. This is due to the cartridges running at an improper voltage that could potentially damage the cart, or even the console itself. They’re telling people to just discard the cartridges they currently have and claim new cartridges will be shipped as soon as new ones are manufactured. Also, if you ordered the collectors edition of Rugrats, you’ll have a choice to wait until the new cartridges are ready to receive the whole thing, or get the box and extras now and the cartridge itself later.
Check out a screenshot of the email here for more info (click for full-sized) and there’s a lot to discuss about this:
I don’t even know where to start. First (and something that affects all LRG customers): Why do people who spend more money to pre-order the special editions always seem to get theirs after people who ordered that standard edition? Shouldn’t you be rewarded for spending more and not punished by waiting? Or do they usually ship at the same time and I’ve just been unlucky with my “special edition” purchases?
Second, what does LRG think is going to happen to the existing carts? Do they think people will actually discard them? What happens if these dangerous carts end up on eBay? And to continue on that point, will the new manufacturing run have some easy identifier make sure people know its the correct version? A different color PCB? An updated label? Anything???
Lastly, the fact that this happened in the first place is ridiculous. We originally covered the voltage topic in great detail almost eight years ago and have been continuing to educate people ever since. In fact, EVERY SINGLE TIME we discuss a new cartridge release, we always make a point to tell people to verify their cartridge is beveled and ask that anyone with circuit knowledge take a look at the PCB and check voltages. This should be basic, common knowledge to anyone making game cartridges and the fact that they let this slip by is gross negligence.
Its especially a stupid move for a bigger company like LRG, as I truly believe the only reason we haven’t seen a class-action lawsuit to smaller companies that release potentially dangerous cartridge games is there’s no point – They’d go bankrupt before they even got to court and fly-by-night Aliexpress resellers would just disappear and come back under a different name. The fact that an established company who should know better allowed this mistake to happen opens them up to lawsuits for anyone who tries to use the game, then has their console fail. And I’ll be blunt: There’s far more dangerous things to worry about with retro consoles, such as bad PSU’s and even static electricity. But if some lawyer looking to make a name for themselves actually did make a case for this, the burden of proof would be on LRG to show their carts running at the wrong voltage wasn’t what killed an already fragile 30+ year old console.
If you’d like the original, detailed discussion about the topic, check out an old Retro Roundtable episode, at about the 10 minute mark. Please be warned: When we started doing those, we had an extremely small audience and didn’t think anyone would mind our rude behavior and profanity. If you’re offended by that stuff, maybe skip it. If you’d like to listen, know that whenever we said something mean, we were just being silly…and 99% of the time, it was just aimed at each other in fun anyway:
