Unfortunately, the Virtual Boy was panned even before release. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the person responsible for the Game & Watch and the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was considered a failure. As a result, he was publicly ridiculed. He quit Nintendo and formed his own company, but died in a car crash soon after. The Virtual Boy unfortunately wasn't accepted, as people who played on the system complained of headaches due to the display. It's not something you can play for extended periods of time.

In regard to cleaning the contacts, DO NOT USE A PENCIL ERASER!! Because of the abrasive nature, the eraser on a pencil will actually wear off the gold coating on the contact, exposing the tin underneath, which will cause corrosion and bad contact. This can also cause electrostatic discharge, which can destroy the chips and render the game useless. Use a cotton swab and alcohol, but NOT a pencil eraser.

In regards to the difficulty switches, switching to "B" was the easier setting and switching to "A" was the harder setting. Some examples:

Missile Command:

A: Make the missiles you launch slower

B: Make the missiles you launch faster

Space Invaders:

A: Makes your base bigger (and most likely to be hit)

B: Makes your base smaller

Asteroids:

A: UFOs appear

B: UFOs does not appear

Hopefully the information I provided here will help those confused with the difficulty switches.

Yes, socketing the chips DID make replacement easy. However, because they are of the DIP (Dual Inline Package) design, they have one annoying flaw: They tend to "walk" out of the sockets over time. Here's how it happens: When you turn the system on and off, the internal circuitry heats up and cools down. This causes expansion when heated, and contraction when cooled. Over a period of time, this causes the chips to "walk" out of the sockets, causing bad contact and the system will fail to power up. The solution is to open it up and reseat the chips back into the socket. This is one annoying thing about that design. The original IBM PC had a lot of sockets for its memory, and when the event I described happens, the computer would refuse to power up. That's the reason why SIMMs and DIMMs were introduced.

It's interesting to note that the 6507 was a 6502 with some data lines deleted. This meant that the 2600 can only access up to 4K. However, some companies used a bank switching technique, so some cartridges had as much as 16K! That was quite a bit in those days, as memory was pretty expensive.

I actually have Tri-Wing screws on mine!! You can't open the unit up unless you have the proper tools!