10 Amazing Hidden Console Details You Didn't Know

Back in the '80s, delivering millions of poor, trapped dust mites from their video game console prison was as simple as blowing on the cartridge slot. Connectors cleaned, you could now happily complete - or frustratingly not complete - your grime-free games.

Cartridges might be a thing of the past, but in the age of power-chugging super consoles, dust-gathering hardware remains an issue. Are your console's fans having seismologists wind up the civil alert system? It's probably clogged to high heaven with air-borne detritus. But cleaning a modern console is futile: not only are they hermetically sealed, but the second a feather duster makes the faintest contact, they inevitably switch themselves on. It's a scientific fact that the PS4's wedged form factor is designed to make it as inaccessible as humanly possible.

Sony actually came up with a solution for this in its predecessor, the PS3. Well, sort of. With the power off, holding down eject and then plugging it back in will activate a scarcely believable self-cleaning feature. Yes: a self-cleaning feature. It does this by basically overclocking the fan, thus blasting all the dirt out like a pressure washer. Whether this is a good solution is debatable, but it's certainly an exciting one.