Anyone else think this is strange?

Quick bit of background - one of my friends gave me a box of Super Famicom games - mostly loose carts, but with a few boxed ones. One of the boxed ones amused me because despite being 20 years old it looked like it came off the production line yesterday - not a dent or scratch anywhere on the box or the cart, manual was perfect and all the other stuff was there.

Another of my friends collects CIB SFC stuff so I told him he could have it since it was in such great condition.

Now is the (to me) strange bit - the game is Tengai Makyou Zero which, if you're not familiar with it, has a real-time clock inside the cart. Since the RTC takes a lot more current than just backing up SRAM does, the batteries in that game are generally completely dead, and this one was no exception.

So I asked him if he wanted me to replace the battery with a new one - I have a stock of the exact style of Panasonic horizontal PCB mount CR2032 cells that Nintendo used. He said no, because with a replaced battery it wouldn't be "original" any more. Which is true - but in the state the cart is in, it's really unusable since it loses the save memory when you turn the console off.

Are there many people that feel this way, or is my friend an extreme outlier?

 

I've seen it before but mainly on nintendoage and I'm with you on this,it's just a battery but some people are way more critical to originality,hell I even seen people get upset of changing the back shell of a game.

 

I guess I can understand it but personally I think it's such a waste to not use old games and hardware - even if it means fixing it/modding it in some way/giving it to someone that can or is willing to do these things.
It's kind of sad if these things just lay dormant and not used for purpose.

 

Tell him the old battery could leak and cause irreparable damage to the cart.

 

Some people view retro games as historical artifacts, but even the Mona Lisa got a new frame in the 50's because the old one might've damaged it.

Also, clickbait.

 

It's like not changing your motor oil because the car would no longer be original.

 

Get this,I once got a sfc game and could hear something rattling inside so I open her up and discovered the battery was never soldered in,looked like a factory error as it looked way to clean so of course I added some solder and got it working.

 

That’s kinda weird for me. History is history, and preservation is important, but like @-=FamilyGuy=- said, the battery could leak and destroy the whole thing.

Also, my personal opinion, I’d rather have that battery not be original then have an otherwise fun and playable game just be a hunk of junk.

 

Give it to someone who’ll actually enjoy/use it instead!

 

Yeah... you know it’s cool to collect stuff but it’s much better to actually get use out of it instead of let it collect dust.

 

I think they're going overboard since the health of a cart depends on that battery (save data aside) so ideally to ensure it's not dead or in harms way I would take precautions like you would normally do. I do see where your friend is coming from but ask him this

If a game with an EPROM was around and it's stickers were tearing or peeling up would you replace it since doing otherwise might render those chips damaged. Sure it's not a battery, but the game itself is in danger now.

Spoiler

At first I thought you made a clever post about this

 

I don't know if it's "strange", extreme? Yes. But some collectors are real perfectionists. If he's not playing it and leaving it in the box forever, I could see how he might not care to have it changed.

 

If it were a game where the label is damaged by opening it, I could understand that. It isn't.

I can appreciate wanting a console to be in original, unmodified condition. However, electronics break - and there's no value in broken electronics.

If the battery leaks, it will probably damage the board. Then the game's value will decrease. It could even leak out of the cartridge and damage the nice packaging, thus devaluing that, too.

Do it, say you already did it and he doesn't have to take it for free if he wants to be fussy about that

 

OK, it seems this sort of feeling is more common than I thought. As it happens, I have already given him the cart (with the original, dead, battery) - I've also since discovered that he already has a cart-only copy of the game that has had the battery replaced and hence having a dead battery in the new cart won't impact his ability to play the game.

I'm honestly not too worried about the battery leaking - it's run down to about 100mV and hasn't shown any signs of swelling or leakage so far.

 

Lithium metal batterys don’t normally leak, Alkaline do by design fault inherent to their chemistry

 

Not strange at all for someone who's just going to stick it on the shelf. If it were an expensive title I'd say it was a good choice. Some people are really obsessive about this sort of thing.

 

I wish I had a friend, and even better would be one who gave me games for free.

 

Not strange, just stupid.

 

I don't think replacing the battery does anything except increase the value of the item personally. Not everyone wants to do that work, so having it done already makes it more convenient. While his battery hasn't leaked yet, Its always good to plan ahead. (^_^);