What's your thoughts on disc life?

[toymachine78]

Pat the NES Punk recently posted a video from a conference ( collecting 101), where he stated that CD games will only last 25 years, and one day you will put them in and they won't work.

From what I've read online, recorded optical media should last anywhere from 50-100 years if kept in optimal conditions and handled gently.

What's your thoughts? I know I have disks that are on the 25 year mark and they look mint and play fine.

[sirhcman]

  he is no expert.. take care of your collection and it should be fine for years to come. ive always read anywhere from 100 - 200 years on pressed media but who knows really?

im curious to hear what pat the nes punk was trying to say? that cartridges are better? i got a stack of nes carts that have so much wear on the contacts they dont even play anymore. no media is going to last forever...

[lukester]

How long do carts last?

[esteban]

How long do carts last?

Depends on how much use/abuse they faced and storage conditions.

[toymachine78]

I don't think he was saying that carts are better, although they did say chip media will last longer. I think he was working it in to his anti grading spill, and that game media is not meant to last forever, so they shouldn't be graded like comics and cards.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

Just to note, I have run into rotted Dreamcast, PS2, and Gamecube disc over the years. Last GC game I ran into that suffered rot and did not work was Godzilla and Smash Brothers. Smash Brothers just stopped working out of the blue.

[toymachine78]

Wow. Those seem too current to be rotted. Scary!

[SuperDeadite]

I've got hundreds of games on floppy disks from the early 80's, and the only ones that have died had mold on them from being kept in poor conditions.  Treat your games right and they should last a long time.  Most cartridge games should outlive you.

As for pat, if it's not Nintendo USA related, I'd take what he says with a grain of salt or two.

As for CD life in general though, I'd say PCE games should last longer then any modern disc based game.  These days optical media is produced as cheap as possible, and with modern formats of cramming as much on there as you can, quality drops fast.  DC GD-Roms are basically insanely over-burned CDs, ignoring every "safety precaution", so those dieing is really not surprising.

[Tatsujin]

LE WORD!!

[TheClash603]

I just sold my whole collection.  Obviously it would be useless in the next three days anyway...

In all honesty, this stuff does make me really nervous.  I would hate to have a room of useless plastic some day.  Also, I think the collectors might get the last laugh, because they don't play games anyway.

[toymachine78]

Makes me nervous too!

[PunkicCyborg]

I'd bet the systems would all fail before the CDs

[Punch]

The videogame collecting crash will happen when most of the game media will stop working. Kinda sad really, but nothing lasts forever (even us -- I bet the games and systems will outlive us but still that's a valid concern). Don't put it into a VGA graded box, play it while it is still time!

[wildfruit]

My first cd system was a pc back in 1995
Still have the original software that it came with & they show no sign of degradation thus far

Sent from my Lumia 520 on Scabb Island using Tapatalk

[EvilEvoIX]

I know laserdiscs get laser rot, is this similar?