What do you do with your defective games?

[XYXZYZ]

I've just replaced my Bloody Wolf TG16 card which wasn't working. I don't really have a reason to keep it, so I could toss it but I'll probably just leave it lying around. That's what I did with my defective Tiger Heli cart, it just sits in the stack of NES games with it's working replacement. Of course, when a game doesn't work the first thing you do is clean it or try to repair it somehow but when that fails, do you throw them out, or keep them, or repurpose them somehow?

[Tanooki]

I took a Back to the Future 2/3 NES cart, detached the back, drilled out a hole in the center to the right size and mounted a clock to it. Originally it just hung on the wall, but with my new desk I used a soldering iron to melt a hole in the back bottom where the cart pins stick out and mounted a piece of metal to make it into a desk clock too. Didn't seem like a good idea to toss a game, even a crappy one, since the label and movies are that good.

An HuCard though is pretty small, but I'd think you could do something similar with a small digital clock like from a cheap give away wrist watch.

[Videogamerdaryll]

Depending on what it is.

.if I can't use say a cart shell as a swap/the back for a later cart .. I just Lot the broken stuff cheap on ebay hoping someone else may have use for the stuff..

I don't throw much out in gaming..

[DK1105]

I don't think I have ever had a cart game die on me. My Blaster Master cart pins sit crooked but it does play when I find the right spot. Dragon Heart on the Saturn is scratched up and I haven't been able to get it to play passed the menu on the few times I have gotten it to load at all.

[Tanooki]

I bought one DOA ages ago, the first and last time I trusted Funcoland mailorder. I called them, they made claims, and they didn't match them. They said they'd give me good quality games in great shape that worked as ordered. I got a couple of games or so, none were in fantastic shape, average that could be cleaned up fairly nice other than label curls. The one that was pretty was River City Ransom, it was broken, a partly fried rom or trace. You could turn it on, you could get through the title screen and pre-text garbage, but once it got into play it would last just a few seconds, if lucky you could walk it to the next screen but it would crash. I got a refund, they didn't want it back, so I threw it out.

[Atarileaf]

Can't say I have any dead games. Any I've had in the past have been dirt common like Stampede on the 2600 but even then I don't think I really gave it a proper cleaning since I just had other copies.

I'd say with certain carts like text or picture label 2600 games they can be sent to places like atariage where Albert uses the shells for homebrews. I'm sure the same could be done with dead carts on other systems like the NES where authors are looking to reuse shells for homebrews.

[goldenband]

I've had around 10 dead carts, broken down as follows:

- 2 Atari 2600 (Star Ship and Gremlins)
- 2 Atari 7800 (Pole Position II and RealSports Baseball)
- 2 Intellivision (Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and Space Battle)
- 1 NES (Ghost Lion)
- 3 Genesis (Pit Fighter, Comix Zone, and Shove It)

I think that's it. The 7800 carts I sent as donors to AtariAge. Comix Zone was a test run for my EverDrive shell since it was physically damaged (looked like a dog had mangled it), and the Pit Fighter shell was the final product. That's a Tengen game, BTW, and those are notorious for dying.

Ghost Lion may not have been dead -- my NES is super-flaky, so I sent it to someone for cheap. Maybe they got it to work. I also traded Gremlins to someone who figured it was worth a shot since it's a rare game, but he couldn't get it to work either. :(

I would've liked to reuse the Intellivision cart shells for my Cuttle Cart 3, but they were both the screwless type, and I had to sacrifice an Armor Battle instead. I also had a Hover Force I thought was dead, sent it to someone for free...and it worked for him on the first try! Oops.

Someone sent me a free C64 Frogger cart that wouldn't boot, and turned out to have a chunk missing from the side of the PCB. My C64 repairman was kind enough to solder a wire to bypass the damaged trace, and after that it worked fine. Weird thing is, the guy swore up and down that he tested it before he sent it to me, so...?

I had a CoCo cart stop working on me (Spidercide or Downland) when I was a kid, and I threw it away in anger, but odds are it would've come back after a cleaning. I just didn't know!

Oh, and dead disc games...no idea what to do with those. I only have a few with unrecoverable foil damage, and I've gotten replacement copies. I guess I'd like to find someone who's super-scrupulous about copyright laws, and give them the damaged discs so they can play CD-R burns with a clear conscience. :D

[Gentlegamer]

I have a dead Cratermaze Hucard that I don't know what to do with.

[8-Bit Archeology]

If I had a dead Hu card I would peel the black to see how it was made. Then dremel the artwork into a retro game keychain.

I have a Mario kart SNES and dragon warrior NES that are both dead. But I'm going to reflow the solder to see if there is any woof left in them dogs. Also I have a destroyed board in an nice lookin kid chameleon cart. I'm thinking about turning it into a USB hub.

[SparTonberry]

I posted about it back when, probably a couple years ago, but I still haven't decided what to do with this damaged copy of Magic Princess Minky-momo for the Famicom. The case is smashed and the pin connector is bent and half-detached (as in, the pins are all intact but disconnected) but the PCB otherwise seemed to be intact. Hadn't tossed it or anything because it's probably at least an uncommon game.

[goldenband]

I posted about it back when, probably a couple years ago, but I still haven't decided what to do with this damaged copy of Magic Princess Minky-momo for the Famicom. The case is smashed and the pin connector is bent and half-detached (as in, the pins are all intact but disconnected) but the PCB otherwise seemed to be intact. Hadn't tossed it or anything because it's probably at least an uncommon game.

You could desolder the cart ROMs and put them on a different board, I suppose. People have successfully transplanted the ROMs from Tengen games for Genesis (which are notorious for bad PCBs) onto known good PCBs.

[Emperor Megas]

I really never throw any game stuff away unless it's completely beyond repair or re-purposing as wall art, or a clock, lamp, coaster, that sort of thing.

[The Adventurer]

I've got a couple of dead disc games, a Star Fox Adventures w/ case. And a loose Panzer Dragoon Zwei (that I've done everything a can to resuscitate).

I'm not sure what to do with them.

[megasdkirby]

I have a few Genesis games that seem to be dead. I've had them for years. I wonder if replacing the caps on the carts will make them work again. A few years ago I purchased a 32x game from someone on the boards and it didnt work. Replaced the caps, and now it works great. Maybe one day I will get around to replacing the caps on the carts to see if I can make them work again. One of them is a pirate Double Dragon cart that wants to work...

[Gameguy]

I've never really thrown out dead games, just in case they could be used for something. Some people look for carts to use for projects, like NES cart cases to fit hard drives in. I wouldn't really give these away for reproduction carts, if they don't work because the circuit board is damaged then they aren't suitable for reproductions either. I have a Yoshi's Island that doesn't boot but the case is in nice shape so I'm keeping it in case I get a working one with a beat up shell.

I also have a Turbochip game that doesn't work right, it's a Keith Courage. For whatever reason the game boots but the backgrounds don't show. Haven't done anything with it yet.

[Steve W]

The only cartridge game that ever died on me was Demons To Diamonds, bought cheap at the apex of the video game crash. I played it when I got it, was bored, then pulled it out maybe a year later and it was stone cold dead. Not too big a deal, considering.

I have been getting into emulation on my laptop lately, but it's only got a 120GB SSD inside, so there's not that much room for CD-ROM images of old Playstation games and such. So I used a Dremel to hollow out an E.T. Atari cart, wedged in a small 3-port USB hub, and stuck some nice fat thumb drives in it. I've recently picked up a bunch of 16GB thumb drives cheap, so I've also hollowed out an Asteroids cart and a 5200 Pac-Man cart and done the same thing.

There's all sorts of projects you can do with a dead NES case. You could do like somebody did a few years ago, and buy a cheap Famiclone and stuff it inside. Have the power outlet and joystick port accessible through the bottom of the cartridge. That'd be cool.

[Daria]

Keep them. Occasionally open and reclean/fiddle.

[Niku-Sama]

I've been able to repair most everything that hasn't worked.
I'm still working on a few things I bought broken but I know I can fix them even if it calls for radical modifications

even though if I am not able to fix an electronic thing, cause there have been non game things I haven't been able to fix, I harvest them for usable parts.
HuCards are kinda funky but I am sure if you cant fix it you might be able to use it to make your own import adaptor

[rmaerz]

Anything that I can't repair myself goes in a USPS large flat rate box. When the box is full, I offer it up on AtariAge as my "box of crap" and just ask for the buyer to pay shipping. I've done this for several years now and I've never had a problem getting rid of this stuff!

[y9784]

I have turned Atari 2600 carts missing their board upside down and used them as holders for toothpicks and cotton swabs in my game cleaning area.

[Einzelherz]

I have a dead Sonic 1 cart that I'd thought about turning into a wallet (adding a hinge and magnet clasp) but it's just too small to hold credit cards. That and the cheap crappy genesis labels rub off when you look at the funny.