Cartridges won in the end, lads. CDs of all types, games or not, are being destroyed by oxygen 24/7. Doesn’t even matter if the manufacturers did a good job with making a clean disc. There is no point to buying physical discs knowing that all of the games from sega genesis, ps1, ps2, xbox, etc; will all fail eventually. Cartridges quite literally will outlast all of generation X and millennials. Gamecube games especially are going bad fast. Lots of videos on Youtube showing collectors panicking.
>ROMs won
ftfy
This. Almost all of my N64 games don't work anymore. I sold my entire GCN two or three years ago and I'm never looking back. I should have done the same with the cartridges but much sooner.
How the frick don’t they work? Mine are all fine. What did you do to yours?
The contacts on a cartridge can still rust, and cartridges have capacitors which will eventually leak acid.
Gameboy games don’t do that
Right, their batteries will just die instead. :^)
the only games where that's an issue are pokemon, and it's so easy to replace those batteries a child could do it (I just replaced some on a crystal and a yellow last year)
Did you keep your saves?
No they reset when you swap the battery.
If you want a useless but fun parlor trick, plug a game needing a battery change into a GBA or GBA SP with the battery exposed and turn it on. Load into the save data, then proceed to remove the battery and install the new one. When you power it off and re-assemble the cart, the save data will still be there.
Most places don't do this because it ultimately doesn't matter, but if you somehow have a Gen 1 or 2 cart with working saves, it's a way to preserve the savefile if you're unable to dump the data.
just be careful to not bridge the 5V line to ground and short circuit everything.
You're better off just using a DS/DS Lite and ripping the save file, replacing the battery, then re-writing it.
Or you can be like me and make a Sanni Cart Reader and rip saves and roms from every cart format.
Yep. Like I said, a worthless parlor trick, but a fun one to do if you're confident with your soldering. These days, it's easier to just dump the data and back it up
>physicalgays lose again
what else is new.
Why would you care about old games
If you have any braincells you're emulating them
I have a soul, zoomer.
Old carts on specific consoles win, most new carts used that cheaper media shit that expires and starts to wipe itself after 10 - 20 years. It's why the 3DS and DS Pokemon games were starting to croak way early. Ironically modern disc media due to its better mediums and quality control will outlast modern carts, the only issue is the tons of moving parts and phone home shit that's in the disc based consoles means the discs will outlive its playing format.
How exactly were the 3ds and ds games croaking? Literally just stopped working?
this.
any game made after February 12, 2008 will fail eventually.
GBA was the last console to use Mask ROM chips, which will last until the rom chip itself disintegrates or the gold bond wires inside de laminate, which could take 400+ years in decent storage conditions.
Everythinf from the DS onward uses flash chips, and they will lose data in 10-20 years. Even EPROMs have more longevity.
Electrolytic capacitors have electrolyte solutions in them. Those are basic, not acidic.
There's no guarantee that electrolytic capacitors are used, sometimes the manufacturer cheaps out and opts for battery acid instead. Look at what happened to the original Xbox.
you're a fricking moron.
Do you know what a capacitor is? Do you know what is does to electricity? How the FRICK do you store electricity in an acid???
They're fricking alkaline solutions. Alkaline solutions are corrosive.
Did you drop out of middle school?
>Did you drop out of middle school?
Yes. Who needs knowledge when you can lift weights?
>a clean disc
i dont have a disc drive in my computer
>cartrdiges won
Anon..
How the frick does the ds and 3ds deteriorate but gameboy games are fine?
GameBoy ones aren't fine either. One of my GameBoy Color Cartridges isn't playable anymore, it still shows the Nintendo logo correctly on boot, but everything is gone after that, no corrosion anywhere on the cartridge's board. It'll happen sooner or later, but you probably won't know unless you check often.
Weird. So basically “collectors” and even those literal boomers on YouTube who have millions worth of games are hoarding shit that will all fail soon. No retro games are impressive to own then. How insane.
I keep all my retro games on one 256gb microsd
This happens to everything physical and not just vidya, metal and other materials as well including clothing. Some are more resilient but they all get damaged to some degree.
Your shoes will oxidize, if abandoned the midsole will turn like this in no time. It will eventually turn like this no matter what and not due to walking, just by being exposed to the air.
Technically they can be fixed forever, I guess this makes for a business within a business.
Some discs depending on where the data is stored can work if you tape the part of the label that is peeling off, but the value is nonexistent if the label is not mint.
I refuse to buy any more retro vidya. If they can’t last me until I die, nothing of it is of worth to me. At least gold buying as a hobby won’t fail me. That shit doesn’t corrode.
Did you check for cold solder joints? It's actually a pretty common issue for Gameboy games and it's really easy to fix.
I don't know, my entire PS1 collection from the 90s still works perfectly. I've been playing them for 30 years and they don't miss a bit
>don't miss a bit
That's what you think. CDs use error correcting code. Eventually that will become insufficient.
I will probably be too old to care if not already dead
seal the disc
I still have my melee disc and it looks nothing like that
stop leaving them outside your window on rainy nights
>leave disc in the rain
>money stolen
defend this planned obsolescence
CDs pressed after 1987 and before 2014 (not gamecube discs, those are actual garbage) are ultrasonic welded to seal the layers.
You can tell how a disc was sealed by feeling the edges. If you run your nail on them and it feels smooth but uneven, with distinct layers then your disc was welded and will never fail unless it cracks.
If the edge is smooth and has no uneven layer feel to it, it is GLUED shut, and will fail within 10-15 years once the glue separates and fails.
Gamecube discs are especially fricking awful and made cheep as frick. They cut the discs and put a thin layer of epoxy on the outer and inner edge that flakes off after just a couple of years. It's horrible.
>my chata and SNoW albums are safe
Do you run your nail along the side like the ring or “up and down” it? I don’t get it
the edge. You know how a CD is like an ogre, and it has layers, right?
Well, glued discs have a smooth edge because of the manufacturing process. The glue is applied and the edges wiped down, leaving a smooth surface as it is cured.
With ultrasonic welding, the layers are distinct because they are literally vibrated until they melt, and each layer has a different thickness, so the end result is rough and uneven. They can't shave it down or anything or it destroys the welded edge.
Realistically speaking how long does a disc live that is perfectly sealed then? Obviously nobody knows yet right?
200-300 years for 70% of discs, assuming good storage conditions.
Discs pressed in the early 80s are starting to show small signs, but it really comes down to how they're stored, including humidity and ambient temperature. The Melee disc in the OP was stored by a clear mongrel and basically fell to the elements.
Basically, as long as you take care of your shit, you won't have much to worry about for another 30-50 years. If you REALLY are paranoid with capacitors, it's cheap to do preventative measures on systems
If you keep wiping the disc it stops disk rot
Dick rot is what I fear the most
I don’t care about my penis, I care about my video games.
What the frick
>I don’t care about my penis, I care about my video games.
Thanks for making me wake up my wife, butthole. I laughed like a moron.
extremely rare
Yeah but the oxygen being exposed to all discs regardless of how it is sealed will still render them null in 10-40 years.
more like 300
Kek no way. Lots of youtubers saying otherwise.
uh huh sure
https://library.imaging.org/admin/apis/public/api/ist/website/downloadArticle/archiving/4/1/art00024
Library of congress has been performing an ongoing study of optical media since 2005 which shows that less than 5% of discs will naturally fail within 15 years, and the "disc rot" is caused by damage to the sealed edge of the disc compromising the seal.
The only other disc in the study that was damaged by accelerated aging was one made by a UK pressing plant owned by phillips.
>only 15 years
RIP my collection. That isn’t a long time frame.
5% failure rate is pretty fricking good considering the test sample includes discs from the early 80s.
I have a CD copy of King's Quest 5 that was printed in 1991, and it still works today.
Whole point of physical games is just collecting.
If you care about playing the games its better to just emulate or get flash carts.
So you are fine collecting games that won’t work in the future or are already broken? I cannot believe people are so fine with even buying ps1 games like tron bonne that are almost 1000 fricking dollars having this information available to us.
I dont collect games.
I am just saying people who do just put them on shelf's and probably never play them.
>5:00
God how fricking corny. This guy literally says all ps1 games will be unplayable in our lifetimes. What bullshit lies.
That man looks like a living concept of reddit.
All relevant game discs printed after the 80's are virtually safe from this, as long as you don't treat them like a moronic mongoloid ape would, because of how they were printed/manufactured.
If you keep ANY (and I mean ANYYYYYY) electronics and storage mediums in a poor environment, you will accelerate the degradation. Even Emu gays will eventually have to face a world where the servers that host the files they get ROMs from, will stop existing eventually.
In reality, you can keep any physical disc virtually until you die, with proper care. Same goes for proper archive backups.
>as long as you don't treat them like a moronic mongoloid ape would,
Fricking kek, sorry brazil.
>Even Emu gays will eventually have to face a world where the servers that host the files they get ROMs from, will stop existing eventually.
It's called torrents, look it up.
>but seeds will stop seeding
At that point the world is probably on the brink of destruction and a bunch of roms is gonna be the least of your worries.
Hosts do require maintaining whether you like it or not.
Plenty of previously lost media is now lost again because the only hosts are no longer seeding and there aren't new torrents. Eventually, we're all susceptible to physical degradation.
My advice is to hoard, and make real backups.
How much worse is the damage to 3DS cartridges if you leave them in the console?
There have been times where I wouldn't touch my 3DS for months and just left the cartridge in the slot.
It's all humidity and ambient temperature. I have 100% perfect cdroms, more than 25 years old. But i have took cds to a crap building i have with my friends, near water and hot as hell and the disks develop rot in 1 year.
That would mean all optical media in Florida has disk rot......and yet that is not the case.
Maybe i got some kind of fungus or bacteria there that likes cds?
Sounds kinda like zoomie cope tbh you will never be able to collect physical on the cheap like everyone else who has a decent collection did
My VHS of Ernest Scared Stupid stopped working.
Just burn it on dvd-r.
>meme rot
not real