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Do your game cartridges still work?

Palamon

Silence is Purple
8,158
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15
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  • Many, many years ago, I discovered my original Pokemon Diamond can no longer read my data, basically rendering the entire game cartridge unplayable unless I clean the pins on the bottom or the inside of the game cart which I am not confident in I'd be able to do.

    My SoulSilver sometimes gives me this message, too, but I can still play it, I just have to remove the game cart for that one and I can play it as normal. Sometimes, my systems also have trouble even recognizing the game cart, so I wondered:

    Are your guys Pokemon DS games still working? At this point in time, Diamond/Pearl are about 14 years old in the United States. Please only reply to this thread if you have physical game cartridges, I don't care about your emulated versions of the game.
     
    8,973
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  • black 2 - should still work, despite me not touching it in about a year. i've really only re-purchased it two or so years back, so it should still be fine
    platinum - same as the above, except i bought this at an even earlier period. despite this, i've kept it in decent condition so it should still work fine
    pokemon mystery dungeon: explorers of sky - decided to include this here despite being a spinoff, but it falls into the same categories as the above two. i've only played this once within the last year and it worked fine. o:
    pokemon red version - this.... i'm not so sure about. i don't have a game boy anymore. so who knows if this still works? same applies to my Silver version which is somewhere around this house. x.x
     
    41,352
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  • My Crystal cartridge didn't work too well when I checked a few years ago and I imagine others wouldn't be much better. D: If my copy of one of my DS games (Animal Crossing Wild World) is anything to go off of where it keeps freezing within a few minutes, then others probably won't work too well either.. haha.
     

    Sydian

    fake your death.
    33,379
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  • i have trouble with my DS recognizing my cartridges lately, but after enough messing around with them, they eventually work. so it's not a technical issue, but maybe keeping all my games together in a bag where they're rubbing against each other ended up being a not so great idea after all these years lol
     
    45,859
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  • They were all working roughly a year ago when I pillaged them shinies to transfer up to Home. Everything from GBA upward. Did not check my Blue/Yellow copies at all though.

    Initially Diamond did not. The DS would not for the life of me register there was a cartridge inside it. Carefully cleaning it several times and eventually it suddenly read it again and was working. It was the only one with the issue though.
     
    513
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  • Of the games I have physical carts of and are decently old at this point:

    Black - works perfectly fine
    HeartGold - perfectly fine (realized like last month i never finished the kanto side all those years ago, was really fun playing with my 10+ year team)
    Platinum - also fine but saving times are now horrendously long (was it always like this?)
    Emerald - well.. it certainly works and I can save and play the game. The internal battery ran out so no more clock based events for me but thats fine I dont plan on restarting the game anytime soon. I had it crash one on start up after like 4 years of total disuse but it worked pretty smoothly since then.

    The spinoffs like mystery dungeon and ranger for DS and Gameboy (red rescue team) all work perfectly fine. Really kinda surprised though since i used to drop my gameboy all the time and nothing bad has happened to it other than a few minor scratches while my old DS literally broke in half.
     

    Nah

    15,947
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    • Age 31
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    All of my DS and 3DS Pokemon games still function fine. Going back further than that though, my copy of Yellow stopped working years ago, and I'd need to check my Silver to see if that still works. Ruby also still works, though like most copies of R/S/E at this point, the internal battery is dead.
     
    23,337
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    • She/Her, It/Its
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    Last time I checked Blue still worked fine. The saves of Gold and Crystal are wiped due to the battery dying. Sapphire's battery is dead, as well. All the DS games I own should still be working. I'd probably need to check on my OR version, though, considering that it's a European version which apparently had some quality related problems?
     

    Palamon

    Silence is Purple
    8,158
    Posts
    15
    Years
  • Speaking of 3ds games, my Pokemon 3ds are starting to have trouble reading, too, specifically OR/AS, though. They still run perfectly fine, but it takes a lot of effort to get my 3ds to be able to read them. To be fair, though, they sit in a ds case touching other games, though, so I suppose it's not a surprise they don't get recognized by my 3ds immediately.
     
    86
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    • Seen Jan 23, 2022
    Yep. Surprisingly even though it was used when I first got it years ago. And my ventures into the void and countless crashing from getting into said void. And many MANY play toughs my copy of pearl still works. It sometimes needs to be ejected and re-inserted when I load it into my 2dsxl. I think the contacts need to be cleaned
     
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