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Video Games Discussion

Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here - Page 1

Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2019-06-27 04:22:42
Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

1. My Qix Adventure Game Boy cartridge: No matter how many times I boot it and try to blow on it it always results in the same corrupted boot ROM logo. The corrupted logo is exactly the same between different Game Boy systems, suggesting it's not just one system's read error.

2. My rusted Stadium 2 cartridge. Someone sold me a Stadium 2 cartridge, but the contacts were rusted. I did a technique to clean the contacts; and it eventually worked. However, later the music would shift to noise and crackling sounds. Later it stopped working again. Unfortunately I could not return it and had to buy a new one which is sad considering they are quite valuable nowadays.

3. Black boxes/lines for sprites on rare occasions load on my Pocket Monsters Green cartridge(s). This however is not uncommon in terms of how many people have also experienced the same thing.

4. The various dead battery Pokémon Crystal, Gold/Silver, and an international (French/German or Italian) Red/Blue/Yellow (not sure which probably Red) cartridge  that deleted a completed save. Most of the time you may see it with the Generation II cartridges due to the save battery being linked with the real-time clock, especially now. It also affects my Telefang cartridge.

5. Sennen Kazoku (GBA) has a save battery. If it is dead you can't play the game at all due to an error message before the title screen. Many of them nowadays don't work, which is why it's a good idea to get it on Japanese Wii U Virtual Console instead.

[img]https://gamefaqs.akamaized.net/screens/1/6/b/gfs_62043_1_1.jpg[/img]

6. A strange load error for Densetsu no Stafy at one time, where the file menus had corrupted progress. I thought I had lost my saves, but on a next reboot they were fine. So it may have just been a read error; although I read Densetsu no Stafy has a save battery rather (or along with) than flash memory too, maybe it could be dying.

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-06-27 22:01:19
Some of these are solvable:
2: Vinegar *might* work, but if you're handy with a soldering iron you can entirely resurface the contacts.
4, 5, 6: Save batteries can be replaced, y'know…

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Lost-Paisley
Date: 2019-06-27 22:14:19
Other than my PMD Red Rescue Team being slightly damaged, I have a few other games with some odd quirks.

1. My Explorers of Sky game, when played on my DSi, seems to have trouble bringing up the main menu when you start up the game:
https://imgur.com/bGNKmPn
Sometimes it loads and other times it just refuses to and takes forever. The game hasn't crashed or anything, the music still plays like normal. I thought this was because I used an AR to make my hero Psyduck, but putting it in my 3DS makes it work fine. It's still interesting nonetheless.

2. I have a copy of Colosseum that iirc was bought used at GameStop years ago when I was younger, and unfortunately they never told me that the disk has a scratch on it that permanently prevents me from ever trading. Everything else works, I just can't ever trade, it throws out a "Save Failed" every time:
https://imgur.com/1HZRn8f
Been looking to find a new copy recently so I can finally trade off some old mons.

3. My Pokemon Gold's battery died around the same time Gold came out on VC, but I remember my file had a very unusually glitched Trainer House. Never used Mystery Gift at all or glitched much other than cloning (no bad clones either.) First glitch trainer was nameless and had either a lv. 0 Koffing or Growlithe that froze the game. At some point it changed the name to something else and I had it send out a lv. 0 Primeape that froze the game. Before the battery died, all the trainer would do now is crash/reset the game the second the battle starts. I do know it gave me a ton of glitched mail and 6 Old Rods though. It's a strange case of random corruption.

4. And this other one is either an issue with my AR or my Platinum version; having the latter in it causes the AR's text colors to flash and not let any codes work or even freeze. Doesn't always happen. Platinum still works as far as I know.

5. Non-Pokemon related: I have SSX Tricky bought used from GameStop as well, and a scratch on it has made it impossible to ever play. Used to work for a time, but now it never does.
This scratch damage is really odd: whenever you try to do freeplay, race or do trick competitions, the second the game loads it up, it throws up a blue box saying it can't read the disk. On a GC you can kinda bypass this by opening the disk tray and closing it, but you'd have to do it repeatedly to even play and it's not worth it. What is notable is that on races or trick competitions there is no music and no announcer for the event. Only the crowd cheers, your character's voice, sound effects and the Tricky meter voice are heard.
There are rare instances that it can read the disk and you can freeplay, but there's just no music. I can only guess that the scratch has damaged sound files to a degree, but somehow it's enough to make the game unreadable if you try to play.

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2019-06-28 11:04:45

Some of these are solvable:
2: Vinegar *might* work, but if you're handy with a soldering iron you can entirely resurface the contacts.
4, 5, 6: Save batteries can be replaced, y'know…


Thank you for the advice!


Other than my PMD Red Rescue Team being slightly damaged, I have a few other games with some odd quirks.

1. My Explorers of Sky game, when played on my DSi, seems to have trouble bringing up the main menu when you start up the game:
https://imgur.com/bGNKmPn
Sometimes it loads and other times it just refuses to and takes forever. The game hasn't crashed or anything, the music still plays like normal. I thought this was because I used an AR to make my hero Psyduck, but putting it in my 3DS makes it work fine. It's still interesting nonetheless.

2. I have a copy of Colosseum that iirc was bought used at GameStop years ago when I was younger, and unfortunately they never told me that the disk has a scratch on it that permanently prevents me from ever trading. Everything else works, I just can't ever trade, it throws out a "Save Failed" every time:
https://imgur.com/1HZRn8f
Been looking to find a new copy recently so I can finally trade off some old mons.

3. My Pokemon Gold's battery died around the same time Gold came out on VC, but I remember my file had a very unusually glitched Trainer House. Never used Mystery Gift at all or glitched much other than cloning (no bad clones either.) First glitch trainer was nameless and had either a lv. 0 Koffing or Growlithe that froze the game. At some point it changed the name to something else and I had it send out a lv. 0 Primeape that froze the game. Before the battery died, all the trainer would do now is crash/reset the game the second the battle starts. I do know it gave me a ton of glitched mail and 6 Old Rods though. It's a strange case of random corruption.

4. And this other one is either an issue with my AR or my Platinum version; having the latter in it causes the AR's text colors to flash and not let any codes work or even freeze. Doesn't always happen. Platinum still works as far as I know.

5. Non-Pokemon related: I have SSX Tricky bought used from GameStop as well, and a scratch on it has made it impossible to ever play. Used to work for a time, but now it never does.
This scratch damage is really odd: whenever you try to do freeplay, race or do trick competitions, the second the game loads it up, it throws up a blue box saying it can't read the disk. On a GC you can kinda bypass this by opening the disk tray and closing it, but you'd have to do it repeatedly to even play and it's not worth it. What is notable is that on races or trick competitions there is no music and no announcer for the event. Only the crowd cheers, your character's voice, sound effects and the Tricky meter voice are heard.
There are rare instances that it can read the disk and you can freeplay, but there's just no music. I can only guess that the scratch has damaged sound files to a degree, but somehow it's enough to make the game unreadable if you try to play.


Ouch. Also re: Action Replay DS, yeah, I relate with that. The Action Replay DS are very fragile, and sometimes you can break them by interfering with a firmware update. Additionally I had trouble with a certain DS card (possibly either Fossil Fighters or Monster Racers).

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2019-06-28 20:49:49
- The ol' Pokemon Crystal save battery deatharoo. Dunno if it's worth going through the trouble to replace it.
- Still have Yellow, but it's very finicky and sometimes boots to a corrupted Nintendo logo, so I guess the cartridge connectors are on their way out or something.
- I've had Pokemon Pinball freeze randomly on me.
- Super Mario Galaxy disc scratched. Now there's one where I will not be buying another disc.
- Bought a really cheap GBA cart on eBay (Enchanted, I think it was) once, it was a fake, so I decided to dismantle it. I'm not really the best at dismantling, so it's not going back together again. That counts as broken, right?

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-06-28 21:09:40

- The ol' Pokemon Crystal save battery deatharoo. Dunno if it's worth going through the trouble to replace it.
- Still have Yellow, but it's very finicky and sometimes boots to a corrupted Nintendo logo, so I guess the cartridge connectors are on their way out or something.
- I've had Pokemon Pinball freeze randomly on me.
- Super Mario Galaxy disc scratched. Now there's one where I will not be buying another disc.
- Bought a really cheap GBA cart on eBay (Enchanted, I think it was) once, it was a fake, so I decided to dismantle it. I'm not really the best at dismantling, so it's not going back together again. That counts as broken, right?
-Depends on how well you can take things apart and not break them.
-Or the MBC is. That happened to me on a Silver cart.
-no comment
-just hack your Wii and use a USB loader with a rip of a disc you can buy. or pirate it, either works lol
-pics? also strike the self-fixing of the cart from point 1 i guess

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2019-06-28 21:35:42


- The ol' Pokemon Crystal save battery deatharoo. Dunno if it's worth going through the trouble to replace it.
- Still have Yellow, but it's very finicky and sometimes boots to a corrupted Nintendo logo, so I guess the cartridge connectors are on their way out or something.
- I've had Pokemon Pinball freeze randomly on me.
- Super Mario Galaxy disc scratched. Now there's one where I will not be buying another disc.
- Bought a really cheap GBA cart on eBay (Enchanted, I think it was) once, it was a fake, so I decided to dismantle it. I'm not really the best at dismantling, so it's not going back together again. That counts as broken, right?
-Depends on how well you can take things apart and not break them.
-Or the MBC is. That happened to me on a Silver cart.
-no comment
-just hack your Wii and use a USB loader with a rip of a disc you can buy. or pirate it, either works lol
-pics? also strike the self-fixing of the cart from point 1 i guess


- Not very well, see also: The last point
- The cart boots fine eventually, it's just a gremlin and likes to misbehave
- Well I mean like I'm gonna; I just wish I didn't rip it as .gcz back in the day like a dumbarse
- Don't remember where I put it, I think I might have thrown away the pieces

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Pokedude
Date: 2019-06-28 21:45:53
The Story of my DSiXL
So I have/had this awesome Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary Edition DSi XL. I got it for Christmas when I was about 6 or 7 years old, and I've cherished it ever since. Sadly I didn't understand to take care of those things when I was younger, and I dropped it a lot. Eventually the card reader stopped working, and to replace it you have to use soldering iron. So in June of this year I tried swapping motherboards with my sister's old DSi XL, taking mine apart first… I failed, and broke my battery wire or something like that. I was trying to fix it because playing my old DS games on my 3DS just isn't the same…

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Ryccardo
Date: 2019-07-09 06:39:22
1- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (PS1) - was too bad of a player as a kid to go beyond 60% or so, later (with the help of a friend) found out that the disc was too scratched to load a couple of levels after that point, ultimately replayed & finished it on an emulator a couple of years ago…

2- Pokemon Crystal - allegedly lost it, found it a long time later glued to the floor by some adhesive and very smelly substance, at which point (well, after planing off that stuff on the back) it only booted to a light blue screen (comparable to the background of the gender selection screen) - probably a bad mapper

3- Super Mario Bros 3 (heee) (GBA) - save chip went bad and pulled down the entire bus, so I brutally removed it, resulting in a game that's unplayable (as many people who tried to emulate it know, it requires its Flash 128K to even start) but certainly dumpable, so I did that and now play it occasionally on my Ezflash 3in1 (I actually kept the shell, sanded down the insided, superglued the electronics of the Lite-sized flashcard inside to make it fit in an original DS, and added in green marker "in 1" to the "Super Mario 3" logo  ;D )

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Ketsuban
Date: 2019-07-09 16:32:24

5. Sennen Kazoku (GBA) has a save battery. If it is dead you can't play the game at all due to an error message before the title screen. Many of them nowadays don't work, which is why it's a good idea to get it on Japanese Wii U Virtual Console instead.

[img]https://gamefaqs.akamaized.net/screens/1/6/b/gfs_62043_1_1.jpg[/img]


て可ま
の任天客口にくだ

Tokei-kinō ga kowarete iru kanōsei ga arimasu.
Moyori no Nintendō O-kyaku-sama Go-sōdan-madoguchi' ni o-toi-awase kudasai.

There is a possibility that the clock function is broken.
Please contact your nearest Nintendo Customer Support Center.

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: bwill11
Date: 2019-07-15 13:35:56
My copy of Pokemon White 2 isn't broken completely, but often times when I load the game it brings me to a blue screen with an error message. It sometimes works, but with no discernable pattern as to when.

My action replay DS is also broken, loading it has the action replay logo on the top screen and a blank red screen on the bottom. This and the White 2 cartridge are unrelated, I started having problems with the Action Replay long before White 2.

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-07-15 14:47:50

My copy of Pokemon White 2 isn't broken completely, but often times when I load the game it brings me to a blue screen with an error message. It sometimes works, but with no discernable pattern as to when.

My action replay DS is also broken, loading it has the action replay logo on the top screen and a blank red screen on the bottom. This and the White 2 cartridge are unrelated, I started having problems with the Action Replay long before White 2.
ARDS is notoriously screwy… makes me think they were made really shittily.

What's the W2 error?

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Ryccardo
Date: 2019-07-15 14:59:14

ARDS is notoriously screwy… makes me think they were made really shittily.

"Yes, without a doubt"
I wonder how many flashcards were sold or borrowed to repair them - I personally know of 6 incidents :)

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2019-07-15 15:05:41


ARDS is notoriously screwy… makes me think they were made really shittily.

"Yes, without a doubt"
I wonder how many flashcards were sold or borrowed to repair them - I personally know of 6 incidents :)


Strange story is my first Action Replay DS broke so I bought a new one. I then used the official cable to update the firmware on my newer one and somehow fixed the older one by updating that by inserting it after the new one loaded. So this may be a way to fix your old Action Replay DS so you can sell it back :) (probably the problem is just a corrupted firmware in memory). They do seem very fragile though, which is why for me I've had to be careful not applying too much force between the DS Card and USB lead; just gently so it fits.

Re: Talk about your broken game cartridges/discs/etc. here

Posted by: bwill11
Date: 2019-07-15 15:20:45
The white 2 error says the save data could not be accessed and to reinsert the game card. However, doing this doesn't work.