Current Events > have you experienced failing physical media yet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

game cartridge batteries should have all died out if they had their original

my starfox 64 copy's battery died and i lost all of the progress and can't save anymore

and i'm pretty sure the gold pin connectors are starting to go

with the passage of time, our physical media is degrading. vhs tapes, CDs, cartridges all will fail eventually

have you had any experience with these kinds of events?

Yes. CD mainly, but some of my SNES and N64 items are dying. It is a bummer.

VHS tapes went bad really fast back in the day

I experienced it the first time, way back in the early to mid 90s. I had 1989 Batman on vhs. Around like 1993 or 1994, the tape started to break down. I watched it so much it was degrading and sections of the movie were unwatchable

But that's different from what TC means I think. It was from overuse

Yeah, I had a couple 3DS games fail and some GBA games have lost their save files for no good reason. Also had batteries fail in the GB Pokmon games.

The batteries in most of my GB Pokemon games have dried out. Humorously, I think my copy of Blue (the oldest) is the one exception.

The very first ripped and burned music CDs that I made in high school had all degraded a few years ago when I tested them.

This was like first generation CD-R so it's not surprising. Haven't had it happen with any commercial CDs yet even though I have some early ones from the late 80s.

My first GameCube had to be replaced because it stopped being able to read discs. Apparently thats just what happens after X hours of playtime. I remember RE4 had recently come out, since thats what I was playing.

lots of DVDs that got scratched and stopped working

I played my Earthbound cart and beat it on my SNES last year just to see if they worked and they were still fine, even had my old saves. I haven't really tested any of my other old stuff recently though.

radical_rhino posted...

My first GameCube had to be replaced because it stopped being able to read discs. Apparently thats just what happens after X hours of playtime.

I had this issue as well, and the console wasn't even that old when it occurred.

The battery in my copy of Pokemon Gold died a few years ago.

I've got some VHS tapes that have grown mold on the film.

Cartridges have batteries?

I gotta check my Wii U disks, since they're very susceptible to disk rot.

I've had VHS tapes degrade and fail. I've actually swapped batteries before in cartridge games where the battery failed. I've had good luck with CDs though. I have some CD based games from as far back as 1993 and they still work.

Waddlez posted...

Cartridges have batteries?

Old cartridge games that saved data had batteries in them since the type of memory that was used required a small charge to hold data after the system was turned off. Modern cartridge games use a different type of memory that doesn't need a battery.