We all remember those Nintendo Service Centers, well I don't but maybe some of you do. These Nintendo Service Centers as they are called, appeared in large malls across America.
The Nintendo Service centers were ran in this way:
People took their broken Nintendo units to their nearest service center
The service technicians used the appropriate Nintendo test cart to identify the faulty part of the Nintendo unit, controller, or cartridge
The technicians could now quickly fix the problems
Now days, these test carts are sought after by collectors. The carts were made with yellow (Donkey Kong Banana) cases with plain labels portraying Mario lifting a Nintendo cart Mario 2 style. When you start up these carts, they just show boring test patterns and such thins like that. After all you didn't think a Test Cart would be a fun game did you?
Every Nintendo Service Center had a few copies of these carts, maybe two of each type, and there were about three varieties or so of test carts. Lets say for arguments sake that there was about 1500 service centers in America. This means that there is probably only 9000 test carts in circulation. Nintendo probably has a few more in their warehouse but besides that there isn't all that many.
As you read above, these carts are pretty hard to find. They aren't as rare as a prototype for these test carts were mass produced. They sell in the $100-200 dollar range on Ebay but you can buy them for less if you head to the right places. Who knows, maybe some local stores still have these things?
NTF2 Test Cart
Control Deck Test Cart
Power Pad Test Cart
Japenese Test Cart
Joystick Test Cart
Port Test Cart
Service Center Controllers
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