Arcade Works Blinking Light Win

Sometime last year I remember coming across I believe it was someone's YouTube video of a Kickstarter funded item called Blinking Light Win. What it was in a nutshell was a way to fix your original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and eliminate that dreaded blinking red light on your NES when you tried to play your favorite game.

After doing a little research, I found that the company behind this product were called Arcade Works. After visiting their site, I believe I have stumbled across them before when I was researching some Neo Geo AES vs. MVS things. I took a look at their online store and saw they had pre-orders for the Blinking Light Win so I dropped the $30 they were asking and waited...

...and waited and waited and waited some more. Looking back at my original PayPal transaction receipt, I paid for the item at the end of July 2015. Well finally the package arrived two weeks ago and last weekend I sat down to install it.

The Blinking Light Win comes packaged in a small bag, nothing fancy. Inside the bag you'll find a new 72 pin connector, a new cartridge tray, a sticker and a very basic set of instructions.

To get started, simply flip over your NES and remove the 6 screws with a Phillips head screwdriver. Once you have the lid off, you simply unscrew the 9 Phillips screws to remove the RF shielding and the cartridge tray.

I should have taken more pictures while I was installing this thing, but hey I was in a hurry to play some NES games as my console hasn't worked properly in almost a year.

Once you have the original, spring loaded cartridge tray removed you have to remove the 72 pin connector from the main board. This proved to be fairly tough as it had a very snug attachment. Once I got it off, I set it aside and grabbed the new board/72 pin connector supplied in my package. You simply plug it onto the main board where you just previously removed the old connector. Then the new cartridge tray just slides down over the connector. That's it! Now simply put the RF shielding back and screw everything down. Now you're ready to put the top back on and tighten those screws and you're ready to game once again!

Once you have your NES re-assembled, there is a small gray sticker you can apply to your NES that reminds you to not press down on your cartridge. No longer will you have to press down on your inserted NES game. This process is what bent the original connection pins and would cause the game cartridge and console to not properly make a connection. Now you simply insert your game and power on!

Changing games I did notice it has a good grip on your game, but nothing too bad. I would still recommend you clean all your games before inserting them into your rejuvenated NES, but oh how sweet it was to pop in Powerblade and power on the console and it fired up the game on the first time!

I used to use a clone NES, but I was shamed by someone in the gaming community for not using the original hardware. I went out and picked up an original NES, but it didn't take long before it quit working. I'd take it apart to clean it and clean all the games, yet it still wasn't reliable. I went out and purchased the top loader model NES and was going to have it modded for at least composite since I wasn't sure if my Blinking Light Win order was ever going to be filled. However now that I have it installed and I've been using it now for about a week, I'm very happy w/ this product. It was well worth the $30 it cost me to breath life back into one of the consoles that got me into gaming. Now I just wish I hadn't sold some of my harder to find NES games!

If you are curious and want to order your own Blinking Light Win, you can check out Arcade Works' online store and place your order today!