Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this Nintendo 64 System from UNIVERSE OnLine back in the beginning of November as a Christmas gift for my sister. This was the sellers description: FREE GAME INCLUDED *** ORIGINAL SYSTEM just plug and play *** LIGHT DETAILS OR COSMETIC WEAR ON CONSOLES DUE AGE *** WILL SHIP 1 FREE RANDOM GAME AND CONTROLLER ** BUY WITH CONFIDENCE 100% guaranteed and MBG 30 days Money Back Guarantee and very fast Customer Service. PLEASE NO PO BOX ** THANKS I bought it for $55.33 at amazon's rating of Very Good, and it seemed like a great deal; console, controller, all wires, and a free game. However, there were many major flaws once it arrived at my house. First of all, upon opening the box, before I even plugged anything in, there was a big problem: Everything was extremely filthy. The controller was the worst, caked in filth and what looked like food particles that had been there for years, the crevices packed with brown and black gunk. The free game looked like it had corrosion damage, like it got wet and was used while wet. The wires were kind of grimy, not cleaned at all, and finally the console was fairly dirty, better than the controller, but still gross and unacceptable. It took me nearly 2 hours with many sheets of paper towels and lots of rubbing alcohol to get everything acceptably clean, but the controller still has brown and yellow stains on parts of it. After the cleaning, I thought that would be the last of the problems, but oh was I wrong. I plugged everything in and inserted the Super Mario 64 cartridge (an Item i bought from a different seller on amazon to which I had no issues with). I turned it on and nothing showed up on my screen. The red light on the front of the console lit up, so I knew it wasn't a power issue, I troubleshooted my TV and tried every fix I could think of to make it work, but still nothing. This is where there was another error, if not flat out lie, with the sellers description: the console did not come as just plug and play, there was an extreme flaw that caused the system to not function, and without the experience, tools, or knowledge of wiring and soldering of electrical wires, the console would have had to have been returned. This is what was wrong: The component cable (The wire that has the red, white, and yellow connectors for audio and video) was completely nonfunctional. After trying everything to get the system working, my dad and I decided to take it to the garage to test all of the wires and connections for faults. My dad has been working with electronics and making his own custom cables for over 45 years, so he has the resources to work on wiring and electronics at home. we cleaned all of the connections with contact cleaner, plugged everything in again, and discovered that there was a clear right channel audio signal (red connector), a noisy and abnormal video signal (yellow connector), and no signal at all from the Left audio channel (white connector). We then opened up the portion of the wire where it plugs into the console and were greeted with an absolute mess. It appears that at some point in the wire's lifetime, someone tried to do something with the wiring of the cable, but ended up ruining the cable, short circuiting basically every wire. If you look at the first 2 pictures I included (or the two pictures of the exposed wires without any blue if they get reordered upon uploading), you can see how badly it was wired. So my dad and I unsoldered everything and re-soldered it, clearing up the video signal, but the left channel audio signal was still not working. We cut off the left channel connector and tested the resistance of the wire (testing to see if we were getting any signal through the wire), which came up with nothing. We cut the wire at what looked like a damaging bend in the wire, but still nothing. It turned out that the fault in the wire was right at the connection that we had just fixed, so we had to unsolder both audio wires, ditch those, and use a spare, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WIRE for the audio channels that my dad had. If you look at the 3rd and 4th pictures I attached (or the pictures with the nicer wiring with the blue cables) you can see that the audio cables are completely different cables. The final 2 pictures are of the finished wire and it plugged into the console. This fix took the rest of the day and it was definitely not something that I wanted to do at all. If someone who did not have the ability or tools to do this fix had this problem, they would have had to buy a whole new wire, or return the console if they didn't know what was wrong. In the end we got everything working good, so that is why I give it at most 2 stars, but due to the filth of everything, and the fact that we had to completely rebuild the component wire for it to even work, I cannot give it any higher. This review is not criticizing the Nintendo 64 system, it is a great console that my sister and I both grew up on and love, I am criticizing the seller, UNIVERSE OnLine, for selling a nonfunctional, filthy item that was in no way acceptable to sell and for misleading me into thinking that the console was clean and working, which it clearly was not. I know this is a long winded review, but I felt that it was important to let you people know what kind of a product I received and to warn you about this seller and their products.