Huh, that's weird

[A Black Falcon]

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. :)