Videogame shelf life

[coreycorey2000]

I also have a Dreamcast game that will not work. Soul Calibur. It's in flawless condition but will not boot up whatsoever. My friend also has opened a few factory sealed Genesis games that did not work. Out of my thousands of games these are the only ones that haven't worked.

[Carey85]

I've had very few cartridge games not to work... Battletoads for Genesis, Time Lord for NES, Burgertime for 2600, among a few others. That's still not too horrible, considering the hundreds of 2600 carts among other systems I have/had.

[telengard]

I was wondering how long games last?

as in how long the information stays on a :

2600 cart or a 5.25 floppy for a C64, or a fami disc, or a CD game for that matter, is there a specific amout of time all of our toys live?

Is there a solution to fix them when the roms have gone or a way to prolong there life?

This topic concerns me a lot. I haven't been bit too much by "bit rot" but I suspect it will start to happen on a bigger scale eventually. I'm even more worried about HW so I've been buying backups of systems and power supplies.

~telengard

[Niku-Sama]

I'm uncertain why CD-Rs come into the conversation anyway. I thought the question was about commercially mass produced games. I say if you must keep something on CD-R (like say Propeller Arena or Thrill Kill), just burn a whole bunch of copies of it....

acually the game i had go bad from the sun was Age of Empires for PC...not a burned version either....i was using it to reflect the sun to blind people in class....


i was in high school at the time

[Xizer]

Early runs of some Dreamcast games had bad burns, so they were literally unreadable by the laser. I have two defective games, Jet Grind Radio, which refuses to boot up, and Mortal Kombat Gold (sound issues). Thank the new GD-ROM format and Sega's inexperience for that.

As for Genesis games, meh, well. They've always felt cheaper made than SNES cartridges and the like.

I also have a Dreamcast game that will not work. Soul Calibur. It's in flawless condition but will not boot up whatsoever. My friend also has opened a few factory sealed Genesis games that did not work. Out of my thousands of games these are the only ones that haven't worked.

[GarrettCRW]

acually the game i had go bad from the sun was Age of Empires for PC...not a burned version either....i was using it to reflect the sun to blind people in class....

And that's why your disc died. CDs and DVDs are like Zartan-they hate direct sunlight (especially the type of exposure you gave your Age of Empires disc).