Tendo City

So as I've probably mentioned at some point, I have a bunch of damaged Gamecube games. How they got scratched I have no idea, but at some point a year or two ago it got bad enough that I finally noticed, as some games had stopped working.

I tried getting them resurfaced, but oddly enough, even though the scratches were removed, more often than not the discs still did not work.

Skies of Arcadia Legends and Capcom vs. SNK 2: EO were fixed, and perhaps another one or two that I can't remember at the moment (Wave Race Blue Storm maybe? I forget if that one was damaged...), but four others were not -- Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (crashes when you try to start a level), SSBM (initially it only crashed most of the way through the single player game, but after resurfacing now it crashes at initial boot), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (crashes when you try to get to the main menu by hitting Start at the title screen), and Soul Calibur II (if you select certain characters the game crashes). None of the four discs have visible scratches, but they don't work anyway. It's very frustrating and odd, certainly...

But that's not why I made this thread. So, I tried the games on my Wii since I now have one. FE, SCII, and SSBM do the same thing they do on my Gamecube, but Paper Mario TTYD, oddly enough... works perfectly on the Wii, no problems. What the heck? Why would the thing crash like that when you try to go to the main menu 99 times out of 100 on the GC, but not at all on the Wii? That's nice, I can play the game again, but... it's so odd...

I tried the game several times in both systems right now, worked every time in the Wii, not at all in the GC.

Life is a mystery.

Have you considered there's something wrong with your Gamecube? The laser alignment could be off, and worse, it's possible that the laser is "off" in such a way that the actual mounting is scratching your Gamecube disks. If that's the case, it could explain a number of those issues.

Keep in mind that the data is stored on the label side of the disk, directly under the label itself (those double sided ones store it in the very middle). Also, try looking at the disk from various different angles. Sometimes a scratch isn't visible without the right lighting, and of course they could still be scratched even if you can't see them. However, my main point is if you see any scratches on the label side, it's beyond repair. The data itself is very likely damaged at that point.

The annoying thing about the Wii is that due to it's inability to play music CDs (it likely doesn't have a CD laser anyway, though I can't be sure there) or DVDs (no excuse for that one, all the hardware is ready and waiting), you can't use any special laser lens cleaning disks in the system. If you try, it'll just fail to read the disk and likely never even move the laser past the part of the disk with the brush in it. The same can be said for the Gamecube, except that you can buy any soft brush for use on lenses and just brush the lens off yourself due to the way it opens. I'd really hate it if I'm exploited into buying some special "Wii laser cleaning disk", so I'd have the music CD with the cleaning lense for EVERY SINGLE OTHER DISK PLAYER IN MY ENTIRE HOUSE, and one JUST for the Wii.

Quote:Have you considered there's something wrong with your Gamecube? The laser alignment could be off, and worse, it's possible that the laser is "off" in such a way that the actual mounting is scratching your Gamecube disks. If that's the case, it could explain a number of those issues.

I did wonder whether something was wrong with my Gamecube. I mean, I could take better care of my discs, but this kind of thing does not usually happen to me... I have only ever had maybe two PC game CDs go bad, for instance, and both were repairable with resurfacing. And both were games I had played a lot. One other PC game was destroyed by a faulty CD drive in the late '90s, but that was a special case. Other than that all of my PC game CDs are fine. And all of my Playstation 1, PS2, and Dreamcast discs all still work that ever have (not counting some Dreamcast CD-Rs that went bad, but those aren't as durable as normal discs I know). Xbox and Wii too of course but I just got those this year.

Before those GC games went bad, in fact, the only games I had seen go bad were some of my Sega CD games -- and there too I can't help but wonder if the system has a problem. I mean, like four of the first five Sega CD discs I bought don't work anymore, with damage so bad you can see light through a bunch of spots on the disc... so either the discs were bad and failed, or the system did something to them. I don't know which it is. I have also had some Sega CD CD-Rs fail, but others that were burned years ago still work, so it's not like it kills all the games I put in it.

As for the Gamecube, if all the damaged games were ones I played a lot, it'd make me think for sure that the problem was with the system, yes. And some of them were games I had played a lot -- Fire Emblem, Skies of Arcadia, and SvC2 are among my most played GC games. SCII also to a slightly lesser extent. But other games I've played a lot of still work fine. And I never did play much at all of Burnout 2 for the GC, which is also scratched and won't boot (I just haven't gotten around to trying to get that one fixed yet). And I had played some of PM: TTYD, but hadn't gotten past midway before quitting it, so I hadn't played it THAT much... so yeah, it doesn't seem to be based on how much I had played the games. I mean, other games I've played a lot of like XGRA or Zelda: TP are fine.

... The first GC game I remember seeing was damaged was Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, which I had played dozens of hours of (beat the game, got my character to level like 95 or so, played partway with several more characters), but despite a bunch of scratches and nicks to the bottom of the disc it still works fine, with one exception - it crashes if you watch the whole intro. I just have to press start and skip that, and other than that the game's as good as ever. But anyway, some time after that I started to run into more... so yeah, it could somehow be the system, sometimes damaging discs or something. It certainly is possible, though I do have dozens of other games which still work. Or perhaps I'm storing the games badly or something, or they got damaged while I was moving them sometime. I don't know. But particularly combined with how last year my 1019 card corrupted and erased three quarters of my GC save files, it has not been a good last year or two for my Gamecube collection...

But at least I don't need to repurchase TTYD now, evidently, I just have to play it on the Wii. Fine with me. :)

*thick country*

best be gettin a gexagonal or a hexi-doo-dad bout 5 bucks gonna open her up, re-adjust the attentuator by bout oh, less than a half turn a quarter, somethin. Cant be hummin on a tinkerin bet a 5 legged horse gonna win that race no sir.

Lasers.