Scratched to hell and back

[ZP3]

So, today, I went on a massive pawn shop run, and came across loose (I hate loose discs) gamecube games priced at $2 a pop. Within the stack were some pretty damn good games, such as Cubivore, both star foxes, harvest moon, sonic adventure two battle, etc. Long story short, I did not buy the games, as they were scratched to hell. How easy, in your experience, is it to get games that are badly scatched playing? I know disc cleaners, like Disc Doctor, are out there, but I didn't know if I had missed the steal of a lifetime.

[Daria]

So, today, I went on a massive pawn shop run, and came across loose (I hate loose discs) gamecube games priced at $2 a pop. Within the stack were some pretty damn good games, such as Cubivore, both star foxes, harvest moon, sonic adventure two battle, etc. Long story short, I did not buy the games, as they were scratched to hell. How easy, in your experience, is it to get games that are badly scatched playing? I know disc cleaners, like Disc Doctor, are out there, but I didn't know if I had missed the steal of a lifetime.

I've heard Gamecube ganes don't fair well in disc cleaners. Someone may be able to provide more information on why but I don't think you missed any great deal there.

[sfchakan]

I am not a disc repair expert and don't have any experience fixing up GameCube discs myself.

However, I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that there are sometimes GameCube-specific plates and pads for some popular machines. Perhaps it makes a difference in the process.

Someone with more experience or knowledge will have to chime in if it's just a money grab.

[Nathan Dunsmore]

Do you have a Play n Trade in your area?

I had a similar situation happen to me earlier this year when I found NCAA Basketball 2k3. The disc stopped spinning about 10 seconds into a match. I took it to a Play n Trade since the machine they use is the same kind used by Netflix. It didn't take ALL the scratches out but it didn't leave any buffer marks liked you'd see from another machine. Cleaning took about 5 minutes and we tested it on the spot and it worked like a champ. Well worth the 5 dollars to have a working copy in my collection.

As for pricing, in my experience a lot of the games you mentioned are relativilty easy to come by comeplete. Personally I'd pay $2.00 for Cubivore just to try it out.

[xelement5x]

Yeah if they were that cheap I would have picked them up on the spot and taken my chances trying to get it resurfaced.

[kai123]

We have a Game X Change near by that resurfaces them and seems to have pretty decent results. I would have grabbed them too at that price. At least then you can "legally" emulate them if you wanted to.

[Atarileaf]

Who's Helen Back?

[ZP3]

I suppose then that I goofed up.

[Gameguy]

Only one I would have bought is Cubivore. Even if the others could be fixed with a resurfacing machine, it's not like it would have been free. The rest of those are easy enough to find complete in the $3-$5 range if you're patient enough. If they were loose and in good condition, then $2 a disc is still decent. Scratched up, not worth it except for Cubivore.

Spending $2 a disc, spending the time and effort to get them resurfaced, hoping they're done properly and spending time playing them to verify this, and then they're still just loose discs, etc. It's really not worth it for slightly uncommon games. At least not to me. Cubivore isn't that common though so I would have bought it.