Why You Shouldn’t Keep Your Retro Games in a Shed
3DO heart-break
Exploring the perils of storing your classic game collection outside. Shawn Pidich’s heart-wrenching experience with his 3DO disc collection: After storing his game CDs in a shed, Shawn found that all but one has succumbed to disc-rot. The only disc to survive was DOOM, which had been left in the console itself.
The Decay of CDs: Disc Rot Explained
CDs, once thought to be eternal storage media for our favorite game collections, have a finite lifespan. Factors like oxidation, UV exposure, water damage, and adhesive failure can cause disc rot, leading to games becoming unplayable due to the deterioration of the reflective layer on the surface.
The Cost of a Mistake in Storage
Shawn’s unfortunate situation serves as a cautionary tale. By storing his precious collection in a damp shed, he inadvertently set his games up for failure. CDs are notorious for being susceptible to environmental factors when exposed to such conditions, making outdoor storage not a viable option.
Have you faced issues with your game collection due to extended storage? How do you ensure the longevity of your retro games?
Where I live temperatures can reach -30C in winter and 30C in summer, so storing anything “sensible” in a shed is a very bad idea. Everything has to be stored in a controlled environment or it will quickly get moldy and rusty.
However, I kept my old 5.25" diskettes in a box where they were a bit squeezed together and they obviously didn’t like that. It could also just be time. Anyways, a few years ago I decided to copy everything on hard drives and some diskettes were now unreadable.
I waited too long to backup them and now it’s too late for some of them.
And even stored “properly”, I also have burned CDs from the early 2000 that are also unreadable. It’s unfortunate but there’s nothing I can do now, except to learn and remember the lesson.
I’m always baffled by people that find old computers stored in barns and still working. Where I am I don’t think they would last more than two winters with this kind of temperature and humidity variation.
Does putting a waterproof label sticker on the top of the disc prevent this sort of decay?
Why not put it all in a sealed chest?
And this is why I’m currently ripping all my discs of any sort to ISOs. Sadly I’ve already run into 4 unreadable ones.
To be honest I’ve got a bunch of CDs, DVDs and game discs etc. Never stored in a shed or attic and many have rot. They tend to be particular labels, publishers or manufacturers. For example I have a few BBC audio CDs and most of those within a certain range of years have succumbed. I personally wouldn’t store these in a shed but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happened under any conditions. I now use ODEs where feasible or FPGA. My game discs are mostly for looks now.
