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Nintendo NES Overclocking Guide
Deven "Epicenter" Gallo writes "I've perfected a process by which to overclock the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to run games smoother without slowdown. The NES CPU normally runs at 1.79 MHz, I've reached a stable maximum of 4.2 MHz, about a 230% overclock. The games do not run faster than they should, the CPU never overheats, and most games are perfect up to 3.3 MHz!" Here's the guide on how to perform the modification, along with photos and demonstration videos
Think carefully before overclocking your NES. This procedure will most likely void the warranty.
then we water-cool our coffeemakers...
They say not to do it in the manuals because they were selling their own cleaning solution at the time and wanted you to spend money on their product.
I used to do it all the time. Perfectly safe.
For Science! ... I started to see minor glitching around 3.6, 4.0 was pretty wacky, 4.2, crazy. But it was fun. I certainly wasn't going to stop raising the clock because it wasn't practical. ;)
I tested about 10 games out (some of which I listed info about on the site). I don't have any that refuse to run-- every one handles at least 3.0 MHz. The pitch increase isn't as bad as theory would suggest it should be. In fact, it seems to kind of improve the tone of audio in some games, and a lot of the time, 'out of key' audio is put back IN key (most notably Metroid). That's my 2 cents. Sticklers for 100% perfect original audio won't be thrilled I'm sure. But I'm damn finicky and it still doesn't bug me.