Broken dreams, broken consoles. (The Console Mishaps Thread)

We've all been there. After hundreds of hours of cherished gaming memories, your loyal games machine packs it in - red rings illuminate around the power button, or a hinge comes loose on your handheld, or wires fray... it's frustrating and more than a little sad. So, let's get through the pain of remembering these console woes by sharing tales of times when our games machines gave up the ghost.

I'll kick us off. Today, after a raucous Smash session with my brother, I closed my 3DS only for the hinge to come rocketing off and the top screen to come away from its fixings. My attempts to reattach the screen and my hinge were futile - RIP 3DS.

It came out of nowhere too! Quite upset about it, as it means I'm no longer a Nintendo gamer for the time being. I'm going to buy a New 3DS ASAP, but it won't be for a while now.

Share your woes, GNamer!

Only one that's ever broke on me was my launch 360 which of course RRoD after a 8hrs+ stint on Halo 3's today of release which happened during the last bit of the last level and I some how got the achievement for finishing the game but not the last level.

I had an Xbox 360 RRoD on me too - it was an Elite as well, which I thought had been adjusted to remove the RRoD issue.

My elite did RRoD on me as well.

My Phat DS carried on for a good while, despite the bottom half being attached to the top half by wires alone. The hinges had completely come apart.

The one I always bang on about is my first Wii, which broke down on the 24th December following its release. I'm not saying it's the worst Christmas ever, but it has to be among the most disappointing.

And that sucks, Jay. Hope you can get a new one for cheap soon!

Oof, Christmas Eve? Nasty - no Wii Sports with the family that Christmas, then?

I've got my birthday coming up soonish, so maybe I can get some money off the family to put towards a New 3DS. Extra processing power will do my Smash play sessions wonders anyway!

The only console that ever properly broke down on me was my white DS Lite. The poor little soul got to the stage that it would only work for ten minutes before powering down.

My infamous day one 3DS's Circle Pad needs a mention but probably doesn't count, per se.

That Christmas Eve Wii story is super sad!

I've been pretty lucky. I've had to replace a SNES that wouldn't read cartridges - and that was after 10 years. That and a Wii that stopped reading discs.

Fun bonus fact (I might've told this before): I bought my second one off eBay. It came with two adult-sized Miis, the female of which was called Bitch. Looks like I bought a cheaply-sold Wii off a newly-separated couple. Whackety-schmackety-doo :joker:

I've had numerous consoles pack up on me over the years:

- My original Dreamcast died 6 months after I got it, losing colour and sound first before dying completely. Have also had subsequent Dreamcasts with the dreaded reset issue.
- Had some Disc Read Errors on the original PS2, but later bought a slim PS2 and had no issues (probably the best looking console ever?).
- Original Xbox had an issue where it wouldn't turn off via the power button.
- Had two 360s die from the red rings, an original white 20GB jobby, and a 250GB slim (which was also on Xmas eve, in 2011).

Funnily enough, never had a problem with any Nintendo consoles.

Sorry to hear that Jay, things like that only make me want a one screen Nintendo handheld again. (I also hate the loud clicking noise N3ds XL's make when opening/closing them)

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As for broken consoles of my own I only seem to be hit with minor things like: broken R button on my launch 3ds, faulty power pack with a snes but the biggest things were my ps3 packing in during an update I was initially going to wait to do & the old auto resetting Dreamcast problem.

@gjones wrote:

Funnily enough, never had a problem with any Nintendo consoles.

I've never had an issue with a Nintendo home console, but both my first DS Lite and now my 3DS had their hinge snap off. Perhaps it's something to do with how I'm opening my handhelds...?

@The_Jaster wrote:

Sorry to hear that Jay, things like that only make me want a one screen Nintendo handheld again. (I also hate the loud clicking noise N3ds XL's make when opening/closing them)

Aye, I think I'm going to for a regular sized model when I replace my 3DS with a N3DS. The clicking on my XL was annoying too.

Jay wrote:

Aye, I think I'm going to for a regular sized model when I replace my 3DS with a N3DS. The clicking on my XL was annoying too.

A N3ds really isn't that much smaller than the XL either, I'm glad I have one as a spare though just in case anything happens to my MH XL.

I've now somehow got a spare English and Jap 3ds.. Though I'm way more concerned about my Jap one breaking

So I went through a phase where I'd play like 4 hours of Mario Kart 7 a day, which led to me going through about 3 R buttons. My 4th isn't working either, so I'll be sending that away too...

My brother bit the top screen of my DS, which cracked and refuses to display anything.
The hinge on my second DS has, eh, emigrated away from the DS.

@euan707 wrote:

My brother bit the top screen of my DS, which cracked and refuses to display anything.

I'm hoping that your brother is quite young, as opposed to secretly being a rodent?

My sister, when she was younger, used to have an uncanny habit of finding ways to delete my save files - both Banjo-Kazooie and DK64 fell in such a fashion. But that's drifting from the topic, and certainly doesn't compare with a bitten DS.

@Balladeer wrote:

@euan707 wrote:

My brother bit the top screen of my DS, which cracked and refuses to display anything.

I'm hoping that your brother is quite young, as opposed to secretly being a rodent?

Woah, that explains the tail and the long teeth...

Tremendous boost due to mishap that occurred not ten minutes ago. I was doing some vacuum cleaning when the Wii U's Sensor Bar wire got caught in the cleaner, whose powerful suction tore the wire in two. Bang goes my plan to complete Majora's Mask through the Wii VC... for a few days, at least.

Temporary fix, particularly effective if you're playing a VC game and only need the wiimote for the menu: get someone to hold two matches in front of you and point the wii remote at that. All the sensor bar is is 2 infra red emitters.

Can't you select stuff on the menu with the hand instead when a classic pad is plugged into a wiimote?

You need a wiimote for sure to go from Wii U to Wii modes.

I've ordered a new'un from The Amazon but I am super intrigued to try that matches trick!

I used it with my brother, when his sensor bar was broken and we wanted to play Gamecube games.

I fixed the issue with no matches, in this lovely video

Oh yeah, I forgot there were emitters in the gamepad!

Played a bit of Majora's Mask through Wii VC purely on the GamePad, thanks to our mas. Banker 71 Rupees, so I did.