My Video Game Repair Horror Stories 

My top horror stories all involve customers that attempted repairs on their own. I've had my fair share of bugs, cat urine, human urine, and blood in a variety of all the devices I've repaired over the years. But the ones that always gave me the most headaches were prior repairs. Bugs and literal biohazards are terrible surprises but thankfully, if you've got the power of discretion, you can turn them away. Prior repairs don't work like this sadly, mostly because of accusations and a little thing I like to call "the Last Touch Doctrine". This is basically "I have X problem and you touched it last, therefore it is your fault." Gather 'round the campfire and listen to my tale, because I hate the Last Touch Doctrine and this recent experience just makes me hate it even more. When I do board work on consoles I prefer to have the entire console, controller, cables, the whole thing. This way I can test every possible thing with it and make sure it works before I say it's fixed. One guy came in and all he had with him was the motherboard from his PS4. It had a broken HDMI port, classic problem. This is an incredibly easy fix if you've got the tools. Even if you have to replace the encoder and filters and rebuild half of the HDMI circuit, it's easy enough to handle if you know what you're doing and know how to test the circuit before closing it up. The guy had tried to replace the port himself. All he had was a hair dryer. Fortunately he had the sense to realize a hair dryer wasn't going to cut it, and decided to bring it to a person who has the right tools. I told him I would need the entire PS4 before I could work on it but he insisted on making me take it as-is. He said if there were any problems he'd just bring it all back in. I should have rejected the repair but I didn't. So I replace the port, and in testing discovered all of the data pairs were shorted. I flipped it over, pulled the EMF shield, and checked the filters. They were all shorted too. In that moment I was trying to figure out how a hair dryer could short all of these filters together. I replaced them all, and the data pairs were no longer shorted. However, they were showing irregular diode readings to one another. There was an issue with the encoder, so I replaced that too. Eventually I found myself replacing half of the HDMI circuit, but by the end of it, all of the data pairs tested A-okay and I knew the circuit would absolutely be functional. I let him know it was ready and told him to come pick it up. Guy pays for it and leaves. Comes back a day later upset that the fan isn't spinning. "It was spinning before, now it isn't." This is a sticky situation. I'm sure it was spinning before, but was that before HE started screwing with it, or was it before I started screwing with it? I didn't want to argue so I told him I'd take a look at it "under warranty." Fortunately he brought me the entire console this time, so I could actually work on it for real. I plugged it in and powered it up to verify the fan issue. Yep, the fan definitely wasn't spinning. But the fan isn't what worried me. You know what did worry me? The cursed blinking blue light. For those unfamiliar, the PS4's lightbar (and power LED on newer models) functions as a kind of diagnostic light. On boot the light will blink blue, then eventually transition to solid white when the system is fully booted and ready to be used. A persistent blinking blue light is almost always some kind of boot failure and is (currently) attributed to an APU failure. And guess what this thing was doing? Just sitting there, blinking away. My heart sank. I sat there for 3-4 minutes just waiting, HOPING, to see this damn light turn white. It never did. And I don't have the tools, equipment, or inclination to do APU reballs. In other words, had this guy brought the whole PS4 to me from the very beginning, I could have verified right in front of him that a new HDMI port would not have fixed this thing. But he gave me a board only, and I touched it. I rebuilt half the HDMI circuit. I did all that work, spent all that time, on a board that was more-or-less a vegetable. Cool. Very cool. I figured maybe the issue was because of the fan. I verified the fan itself was functional by testing it in a donor unit. The fan wasn't spinning because of some kind of board failure. I wasn't going to let this PS4 destroy me though. I determined the fan wasn't receiving the PWM signal that actually tells it to spin. I managed to trace it all the way to what appeared to be a missing component on the other side of the board. It looked like a resistor had just been plinked right off the motherboard. I went NOWHERE near this region when rebuilding half the HDMI circuit, so I knew it couldn't have been my fault that this was missing. I pulled a donor and replaced the missing component, and voila! Fanspin! Unfortunately, however, the blinking blue light persisted. At this point I was banging my head against the desk. "I'm gonna have to buy this guy a new PS4, cool." In my desperation I started peering over the board, specifically in the area where I noticed the one missing resistor. After a few minutes of painful searching under a microscope, I discovered something. A small group of what looked to be missing components. I compared to a donor board and yes, indeed, these were all missing components. I pulled the donor components off and plopped them on his board. I figured this was going to be a hail mary, but I wanted to try it. And lo-and-behold, the thing fired up afterwards. After doing some research, I discovered those components were most likely pull-up resistors for a nearby clock chip. Clocks are very important for all sorts of functions in electronics, so I'm sure the clock was providing some kind of necessary component to the boot process for the APU or memory. Since those resistors were missing, the chip wasn't able to send some important signal or receive some important signal vital to booting. Popping the missing components back in completed the circuit and made the chip work again. I was thrilled that I got the system working again. The guy was happy too. But I was also angry. I couldn't charge even a single dime for all the extra work I did, solely because of the Last Touch Doctrine and his absolute insistence that I worked on it initially without the entire console. I know I wasn't the one who knocked those components off. I know it was him. At the very beginning of this whole saga, the guy came to me with a board in a bag full of loose screws. If he was that careless with it, it's no surprise to me that he would have knocked things clean off the motherboard. And I very much doubt the guy had used a hair dryer, he probably tried to blast the thing off with a paint stripper from Harbor Freight and realized he didn't have tweezers or something to lift the port out when it was molten. Those filters were burnt to a crisp. After this ordeal, I absolutely refuse to work on ANYTHING without the entire device. I'm okay with taking prior repairs, but for the love of god just let me have the whole console so I can test it before I waste my time. Whew, that was a long one. But if anyone bothered to read this, I hope this gives you some insight into the kinds of things we have to put up with.

idk how you don't have PTSD Nam-style flashbacks from these repairs.

Imagine waking up on a day near the end of your junior year of college and being like "oh darn I forgot to pick up my Playstation"

He's got me paranoid that there's bugs in my PS4.

The guy who left his PS3 for 3 years probably went to prison in between him leaving the system and picking it up, that honestly feels more possible than him just forgetting about it.

Yo you gotta do more content like this. Love it

"if you cheat, start hiding your expensive stuff"-spawnwave 2019

I remember specifically, with my Wii U, it all of a sudden didn’t want to display on the tv, so we looked into it. And in the ventilation area, THERE WAS THE CARCAS OF A DEAD LIZARD THAT SOMEHOW MADE IT IN!!

When you said "let me show you a picture" after that roach story I just thought OH GOD NO I'M NOT READY FOR THIS.

I repair stuff once in a while. My worst repair was opening my friend's PS2 and finding dead bugs inside of it.

I'm not a technician but I knew someone who was and he told me a weird story of repairing a 3DS' broken R button. If I remember correctly, the customer brought his OG 3DS in because his R button was broken. The technician I knew asked what happened to it because it had a small but visible crack on the plate that covered the battery and the customer just said "Oh I used it to hit a guy who wanted to snatch it and his sun glasses were in the way" The technician laughed it off until he examined it and he saw a very small fragment of glass on the system.

Many years ago a girl I worked with knew that I built and repaired computers so she asked me to take a look at her PC that suddenly stopped working. I take it home and open it up to find dozens of dead cockroaches inside and several still alive. That was the first time I'd ever seen such a horror show inside a computer. Completely freaked me out.

Spawn wave Presents:Tales of the video game industry 1.Episode 1 the terror of Video game repair

As a licensed pest control technician, this doesn't surprise me.

That dude who left the PS3 in the shop for almost 3 years was probably in prison LOL. How the hell do you just leave it there for 3 years and then all of a sudden remember it was there?

I wouldn't have given him a discount on any system. The moment he called the police in I would have the police excort his ass out. And if he refused to leave at that point than they are free to arrest him because at that point he is trespassing.

Preach, brother. I do repairs at the independent game store I work at, and some of the shit I've seen... well, you probably know. Dude came in with a 360 with a stuck disc tray (his kid made a game disc out of playdough and forced the tray closed... and then it dried). I've seen roaches plenty. I once pulled apart this stoner's PS4 to replace the fan and change the thermal paste, and the entire inside was coated in pot smoke residue... it was like someone painted the heatsink with honey, and when I turned it on; it smelled like a goddamn music festival.

It's funny how so many people I know who worked at repairing consoles is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEN, have some bizarre story

I bought a Sega Genesis at a con that I found out was full of dead cockroaches once I brought it home to fix. There was even one baked into the power socket! A lot of TLC, cleaning, and some fresh solder and a new controller socket later, it's up and running beautifully. I've been happily playing Sonic and Knuckles on it! If it wasn't for people like us, these great consoles would end up in the trash!

I’ve worked on thousands of rental houses in my life and you’d be amazed how a lot of people live. I swear some people view roaches as pets. Will literally sleep with them

3 years to drop off a system, come on. You can’t expect people to hold onto something that long. It’s why most game shops I’ve seen give 30 days max.

Definitely enjoyed the stories, reminds me of the horror stories I can tell working in retail.

Returns warehouse I worked at had to evacuate one night due to fire. Turns out one of our returns clerks opened up a box with a laptop that had roaches, which got thrown right into the bin. The bins that led to the box shredder, which does bad things when you feed a lithium ion battery through it.

Me: Thank god my switch is not big enough for cockroaches to enter! Ants: We're about to end this man's whole switch 🐜🐜🐜

I’m an amateur when it comes to repairs, but I totally enjoyed this! Especially that last one attempting a self-repair. I’d admittedly repair stuff on my own, but the moment soldering is involved, I nope the heck outta there and send it to pros like you, haha!

The first one reminds me of an iMac G4 20” I once purchased for restoration. They’re very rare and I thought the $100 I payed for it was a deal as it was in good condition and still worked (Or So It appeared) although, upon taking the base off I was greeted with a complete horror. Thousands of cockroaches large and small started scuttling out. Long story short it took a COMPLETE machine disassembly, (And I mean complete!) I even had to remove the controller board off the Hard Drive to get underneath and spray for cockroach eggs. They even got between the plastic exterior and the metal chassis! I still have nightmares to this day...

PLEASE more of these John!! This is awesome and I know you’ve been in the industry for a while now. Not only to entertain your audience, but to log your life for yourself later on. This is amazing and thank you!! Hope you have an awesome Christmas!!

had a lady come into my gamestop wanting to sell her ps4, so i take off the lid and there were a bunch of dead spiders inside, seeing them sprinkle out like a salt shaker made my teeth crawl

I was over at my cousin’s house one time playing Xbox 360 with her when her little sister (my cousin as well, obviously lol) tripped and accidentally dumped a bunch of liquidy slime on the Xbox. It was the Xbox 360 S and it was set up vertically, so all the slime went through the grill and soaked into the components. We said a prayer and hoped for the best. We never cleaned it out (or even tried to) and it still works amazing to this day 😂

I’d like to see more of these

I've been watching so many console repair channels/videos and am seriously looking into doing it as a side-thing. Love hearing these stories, keep it up!

This channel is like the modern tech tv, G4. I have memories of Adam Sessler and Xplay when watching. Keep it up!

"There are bugs in the system."

That roach one made my face contort and my nerves get all jumpy. I'm terrified of bugs and that story really made my anxiety come out. Lol

Story Time with Jon and Evan could seriously become my favorite series behind News Wave. I deal with people for my job every day and get crazy requests (restaurant stuff, not tech issues) so I love hearing crazy stories that we all share.

you need to do more videos like this, its so interesting listening to the situations that lead to these damaged systems and how they were repaired

So my cousin gave me an old ps3. It was INFESTED WITH ROACHES. INFESTED OUR HOUS

Would’ve told that fool that left his system there for three years to hit the damn road. He was obviously scheming for a deal.

I loved this, man! You can call it "Jon's Corner" and share your memories of a time or situation, whether work-related or not. This is a neat idea.

I'd love to see a series about this!! This was really interesting and crazy to hear about! Video Game horror stories like this always fasinate me.

Loved it, do more :) please I used to buy ps3 units to repair off Ebay. Bought and fixed TONS of them but the 1 I'll never forget was the one filled to the brim with dead roaches. It was something I knew could happen, but never seen myself before. It came from an apartment building in New York, there were literally hundreds of these small 1"-2" long roach's, in and under every component of the system. The smell was absolutely TERRIBLE, I had to remove every piece of this system, clean every inch, especially inside the power supply. Got everything cleaned and working flawlessly, even gave it a clear shell, and modded it for a buddy. Everytime I went to his house I looked at it thinking about how disgusting it was. 🤣 Confession time: He never knew of its past.

“And they were alive” instant classic 😂😂😂

Please do more videos like this. I’ve been having a bad week but this video really cheered me up !

I’ve been looking forward to a video like this forever now, would love to see it become a series!

6:34 "Bugs in the system"

You should make a Respawn Wave youtube account and post broken things getting repaired. Get it your respawning the item after it died for whatever reason. Joy cons, old systems, controllers, etc

I would love to see more of these videos :) I love these types of stories; as a systems admin I have plenty of horror stories of my own...but I always enjoy hearing others experiences :)

This would be a fantastic series given the fact alone that you have a decade plus of experience. PLEASE do more of these!!!

The composure in which you narrate the story is insane. I would have PTSD lol.

more of these please! This was fun, so far favorite story is the 3 year late pick up, reminds me of tales from the game store from Ian on Pat the NES Punks channel

Props to you, man! People who fix consoles and electronics are up there with doctors in my list of respect. I have a used PS3 slim that came with a bad HDMI port and it was freaking annoying because it would overheat and I just didn't know what to do. Thankfully, my trusted technician figured it out and got it working again.

You definitely need to make a series out of this. Either on this channel or SW+. Love this!

Cockroaches LOVE electronics. I used to repair televisions, VCR's and early DVD players. I'd say a good 20% of my repair jobs involved roaches. I'd repair the items, and then take the customer away from the general public, as not to embarrass them and explain what happened, and that if they still have an infestation, this will certainly happen again. Though. There was a time when a 15 year old kid came in with an emergency. He had gotten his parents porno tape stuck in the VCR and they were going to be home in two hours.

PS4'S DO NOT DESERVE TO BE ABUSED IN A RELATIONSHIP 😭😭😭

The level of detail, what with the diagrams, was an unexpectedly amazing touch.

whenever people say roaches i keep thinking the huge roaches we have in the south that are like a good 2 inches big and are scary af but ik people mean those tiny things that are barely the size of the tip of my finger

My personal horror repair: modern devices which can't be repaired.

John this was good stuff! Hearing about these stories is great, please do some more! The roaches story sounded like a nightmare, dear lord....

Okay, this is a great concept. Please keep making more of these!

Keep it up Spawn wave, I'm liking this type of content!

I usually designated a certain controller to be dissected and used for parts for multiple broken controllers and then re-assemble that controller using the broken versions, take it into one of those places that does trade-ins and just trade it in for whatever the price is for a broken controller.

Good one, please bring more! Remember Colin of "This does not compute" had good stories of bug filled computers also. If I recall they used to take the sketchy looking machines outside before opening them.

Really like these sort of videos. It's pretty interesting/fun to listen people's experiences in this kind of job.

Back when I had a game store I used to do repairs, one time a guy brought in a wii and said it "just stopped working". I took it apart to find about half a dozen plastic poker chips jammed in to it lol. We were a retro shop so we got plenty of SNESs and such that were full of bugs, that was pretty common with old systems.

I worked at a major electronics retailer in the storeroom so we had to deal with taking in consoles and sending them to repairers. They sit in a bay ready to be packed and shipped to the repairer, that happens to be next to my desk. I was sitting there eating lunch and a roach runs across the desk. At this point me and my coworker had to bug bait everything in the area. A day or so later, one of us actually see a roach run out of a PS4 we took in for repair. At that point it's too late, the roaches had infested our storeroom, staff kitchen, everything. I check who took the system in and of course it was the store doofus that doesn't check *anything* when checking in customers repair items. I go and speak to him and it was like a lightbulb going off when I told him what happened, he said he wondered why there were roaches all of the sudden at the desk he booked the console in at. TLDR: trust me, we would much prefer you tell us that your console has bugs in it, because surely you'd know. Also work with smart people.

When you started that last story I was about to brag because I soldered in a daughter board into a new disc drive for my Xbox One a couple of years back and it still works to this day. As I continued listening to your story, however, I realized that what you had to do was much more difficult than what I did lol.

Wow man that was insane. Definitely looking forward to hearing more repair disasters.

ha! Man I work in pest control and we always get calls to go to video game stores to treat for roaches because customers return infested consoles and the employees just throw them on the shelf in the back room.

I've been doing cell phone repair for about a year now (professionally). I want to get into soldering soon, but this industry is NOT something I want to do for about 10 years. The clientele you get...let's just say it can be volatile. I'd love to do console / handheld repair in my spare time, and I LOVE how modular the Switch is. Thank you for sharing your stories! I'd love to see more stories like this! Also, I wish there was a video game repair shop near my home!

Please, PLEASE do more of these. Love this type of content.

Please make a series out of this. It was very fun and interesting to listen to.

I once had a what seemed to be a mile-long centipede come out of a Packard Bell computer... lol

My friend usually comes to me to repair his stuff because I like technology He asked me to clean his PS4 (original) What I dident know is that his 3 brothers basically kept it running 24/7 for 5 years (thanks to Fifa and fortnite) So Istarted it up just to see how bad it is and from the get go it sounds like a fighter jet I loaded fallout 4 and it was even louder I turn it off and open it up. Next thing I know is that my desk has a thin layer of dust in it I had to use half of a can of compressed air to get most of the PS4 clean half a family size q tip box to do the rest I decided. Might as well replace the cooling paste the board was stuck to the metal frame and I had to pop it off the old cooling paste was so dry it crumbled off . I apply new cooling paste and put it back together and turn it on and show him he said to me "Wow it's so quiet I never knew it was this quiet in the begining" Tldr: I was bombed by a dust bomb because of Fifa and fortnite

I'd happily watch many more story times, Jon! Excellent video 😁

8:07 *HE* stopped coming back, but he sent someone else haha

My nephew had candle wax spilled in his 360 years ago and I had to open it up and clean it to the best I could. Still works too

Great video - this is the perfect thing to listen to when I'm grinding away at a game.

Yes. These were awesome. Content that can't be duplicated. Always appreciated.

I saw your reply to his tweet and knew this video was coming

Wow this is done juicy gross interesting stories and I wanna hear more 👀

Oh this are great, you definitely have to do more of this. I have one of my own, I once was helping my uncle repair an old tv so my grandma could use it, according to her it needed just a little dust off and it shouldn't take long so we opened it up and take a look, to our surprise and absoulute horror we found a nest of dead rats right in the middle of it, there were like mumified little corpses around and a lot of tiny bones, I'm noping right the hell off but my uncle soldiers on and begins cleaning it, that's when an alive rat jumps at him and we realize that some of the corpses are being moved by something underneath them. Let me tell you that tv when straight to the dumpster and my uncle straight to walmart for a new one for my granny. In all my years I have never heard a man scream like my uncle that day.

we need more of this kind of episodes really , keep up the good work buddy

My real question is that how Scott got candle wax on his xbox

I was taking my 10 year old psp apart and all was going well, all the screws were coming out nice, but I got the the bottom screw and it instantly stripped beyond saving, I ended up drilling the head of the screw off.....

Please do this as a series, I'd love to hear more!

Would absolutely love this to turn into a series!

I got a feeling the new consoles will be tri layer boards. That will make them pretty much un-repairable if one of the embedded caps or resistor goes.

I just bought a used PS4 on eBay now I’m paranoid about roaches

Dude these stories are awesome and super entertaining. Definitely make this a series!

This is amazing, I would absolutely love more of these

*that one dude almost 3 years later, randomly* "oh yeah i have a ps3"

This needs to become a series! Really interesting stories! 😁👌👍

The self-repair fix story was the funniest one, please do more of these vids if you can.

Hahaha dude I love your content, I like how you tell the story and use images to describe your struggles haha! Keep them coming boss man!

All those reballs done and it was never even the problem lol.

I like how we all immediately knew who Scott was.

You gota do more of these, I love listening to these weird story's

I love these stories!! Even if you just do a few sporadically when you like, they'd be great! You got caught up in some real TEA with that couple!

That’s what I call a “Paranoid Android.”

I tried to repair couple of my consoles back in the day.... Rip to them 😂.