Bad gaming memories: Blowing up my Gamecube

There are a bunch of gaming memories that I have in my life but one of them really sticks out to me because it is the only time that I have had a console fail on me in an abrupt and terrifying way.

These days my PS4 will have a technical error every now and then but it has always been a software issue that the system is (thankfully) able to correct on its own. I have had a few friends who have had to have their units rebuilt because of hardware failure and thankfully Sony has a pretty fantastic service department that will take care of this for you provided you live in a big enough city that has a Sony service center. I would imagine that they will be making these increasingly expensive in the next year in an effort to get everyone to step up to PS5 but thankfully, due to continued supply issues they haven't done this yet. On a side note: it is just crazy to me that even after so many months of release and can still prove a bit difficult to acquire a PS5 unit where I live. It's ok though, I don't need to upgrade just yet but I know that I eventually will.

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Back in the day when everyone was fussing about PS2 vs Xbox I was one of the outliers. I went with the Gamecube because I was excited about the prospect of new-age Metroid and Zelda games. Metroid was an amazing game while the initial Zelda release of Wind Waker was a huge disappointment to me. But that is another story, instead I want to talk about the day that I thought I had permanently destroyed my system and in a place where it wasn't possible to get another one.

I was visiting a friend who had a vacation home in the Dominican Republic and I decided to bring down my Gamecube with me because of the fact that he was an old gaming buddy friend from college. We would spend hours playing mostly sport or racing games head to head and while I knew that we would be spending most of our time at the beaches and doing outdoors stuff I thought he would be excited about the prospect of returning to our roots in the evenings. When I broke out the Gamecube on the first night he was super stoked as his wife had kind of whipped the gamer out of him. She allowed an exception because me and him had been acting like giddy little kids the entire day.

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This has all changed with newer systems but I was unaware of two crucial things that were going on in the early 2000's in gaming and my global knowledge wasn't really up to speed at the time.

1. The electrical setup in Dominican Republic is different than in the United States in that we use 110 volt and the DR uses 220

2. The power supply on the Gamecube does NOT regulate the amount of voltage that is being delivered to the console

So we got about halfway through the second game of FIFA 2003 I think it was and then the game started acting wonky, then it started flashing on the screen and then the power supply exploded and smoke started coming out of my beloved Gamecube. This scared the hell out of us because the power supply exploding was extremely loud and just not something you are expecting to ever happen. Things fail sometimes but I'd never heard of them exploding.

I looked up to see if there was a place to get a new power supply in the Dominican Republic and there was a Best Buy of sorts but it was 3.5 hours away by car. Since we didn't really come there to play video games we decided that it wasn't really worth the 7 hour round-trip drive into uncharted territory into the capitol city of the country.

So even though we were really bummed out, we didn't end up playing any more games for the 2 weeks that I was visiting.

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So this was a learning experience that fortunately has a happy ending. As it turns out that smoke that was coming from the Gamecube was just a tiny fuse inside the unit that is specifically designed for exactly this purpose. It cost around $1 to replace and I picked it up at Radio Shack and just did it myself. I voided my warranty when I did this but I think at that point I was past the 1 or 2 years that this lasted for anyway. A new power supply was picked up at Game Stop for $15 or so. When I plugged all of it back in I was delighted to see the Gamecube startup screen as normal.

I would end up only using this system for another year or so because at this point the next gen of consoles was on the way anyway. I never did end up getting another Nintendo console despite the Wii craze that swept the world. I have been a Sony gamer ever since Nintendo really let me down on Zelda.

Anyway, it was a scary day and that is the only time that something like that has ever happened to me. So while I think that all adaptors are meant to be used in multiple regions these days anyway, I learned something that day and to this day any time I travel internationally, which isn't that often, I always check and make sure my electronics are capable of handling a wide array of voltages!