Bit Rot

[kai123]

Never had one before fail.

[treismac]

I have a Castlevania cart for the NES that has bit rot. The character falls right through the floor and dies even in the attract scene when you just let it play it self. No amount of cleaning fixed it so that is what I assumed it was.

Dude, make a video of this and post it to youtube, then drop us a link. I want to see this "bit rot" in action.

I've never heard of this before. While I'd hate for any of my carts to have bit rot occur to them unintentionally, I wouldn't mind purposely causing it to happen to a duplicate cart or two (I'm looking at you, Mario/Duck Hunts!). I really dig video games flipping out as their universe collapses in on itself like when certain Game Genie codes are entered. Cory Arcangel created a movie with Paper Rad about this kind of deterioration of the world of a video game as it ages. I am certain I've posted it on DP before, but screw it...

[jperryss]

I have a Castlevania cart for the NES that has bit rot. The character falls right through the floor and dies even in the attract scene when you just let it play it self. No amount of cleaning fixed it so that is what I assumed it was.

Dude, make a video of this and post it to youtube, then drop us a link. I want to see this "bit rot" in action.

X2. Not that I would definitely consider it bit-rot, but I would love to see this.

[digitalpress]

Wow! Thank you all so much for your input. I figured that many of you would have seen this in 80's and early 90's music CD's but I'm actually relieved to hear at least a few here have had it happen with CD-based games as well. I've seem close-ups of discs with that pinhole effect and many customers have told me about their CD's suddenly stop working but I have never had a disc "go bad" like this for me.

As for EPROMs, I do consider that a form of bit rot but as stated above, it's true that EPROM manufacturers never guaranteed they'd last longer than 10 years and yes, simply re-writing over them will refresh the data within.

And I'd completely forgotten about laserdiscs. Not sure if I'll be able to squeeze that into a 20-second bit rot blurb but thanks for the reminder!

[Tupin]

Well, it was way, way, way more evident in LaserDiscs because they didn't make many compared to CDs, so when they manufactured them badly, it affected a lot of discs.

[Shulamana]

Bought a sealed copy of Windows 98 Second Edition last year and the disc has a dark spot on the data side, it installs and works correctly so I imagine it must be language packs and other useless optional crap on the far edge of the disc.

[Gameguy]

Bought a sealed copy of Windows 98 Second Edition last year and the disc has a dark spot on the data side, it installs and works correctly so I imagine it must be language packs and other useless optional crap on the far edge of the disc.

I've had a few discs like that, it seems the top coat seal isn't that good and the reflective layer is oxidising. If it gets bad enough it won't be readable. I've seen this happen on water damaged discs too.

Now I have to check the laserdiscs I have, I don't have a player but I've picked up a few discs somewhat recently. I'm hoping they're all right.