Immediately below are two photos I took of my actual SNES units. Comparing the units and the way different parts of them had discolored led me to believe that there is something different about the two batches of plastics - the one for the top half of the SNES chassis and the one for the bottom, or the plastic for the old unit and plastic for the new - that made them age differently over time. To further complicate matters, I have another SNES unit that was obviously produced more recently than my original one, and that console shows no sign of aging whatsoever. I soon realized that a much deeper mechanism was responsible for the aesthetic disfigurement of my beloved SNES than mere dirt and sugar. The top half of the console’s plastic body retained a uniformly nasty yellow-brown hue, while the bottom half flaunted its showroom shine - that native SNES gray that we all know and love.

I cleaned off all the remnants of fossilized Coke residue from the chassis with a wet washcloth, but the “moldy bread” look still remained.

But around five years ago, I noticed that my SNES console was aging particularly badly. Heck, I remember a suspicious incident involving my Super Nintendo (SNES) console and a can of Coca-Cola in the early ’90s that left my SNES looking more like a moldy loaf of bread than a video game system.

Super nintendo serial number 001