Here's the story. I bought a used Japanese DC game which was in less-than-mint condition last week. Lots of little scratches on the disc, nothing too deep though. Original GD-ROM disc, I don't waste me time with CD-R's or backups. So I pop it into my Japanese DC console (just got one from japangamestock mainly to play my shooters without the hassle of a boot disc). The game loads fine and I can play all the way up to level 3. After that, you can hear the system's GD drive churning away for about 10 seconds, at which point it just resets to the DC system menu screen. It does this EVERY SINGLE TIME. Lo and behold, in today's mail I got another DC (this one is a domestic US model) which I got as a "Just in case" my main system dies. First thing I did was fire up the the console, pop in my CD-X boot disc, and then load up my problematic Japanese game. Wouldn't you know it? The game not only lets me play past stage 3, but the load times seem a tad quicker without any of the hesitation that this scratched disc gives my Japanese DC. I tried it twice to make sure this was no fluke, but it works perfectly every time. So I take it DC systems are pretty picky when it comes to reading scratched discs. Are the Japanese consoles just more picky when it comes to reading flawed media?
My GF's DC is the same way, sometimes won't even read new condition games, but almost always goes goofy with scratched ones like PSO, but my DC hasn't failed once and runs pretty fast. It seems the DC's and GD's that were packaged in the "white" era for US have more problems then the "black" era ones. Dunno about JP ones though, whats the date on the bottom of the console; any other games affected?
The Japanese console, I have no idea when it was manufactured. The label on the bottom is different from what's on a US console. It says "UGO DENSHI" and the serial # is 050014278192 if that helps. The US console I got today was manufactured on July 2000. This the one that plays my scratched game like a champ. My other DC is a US model that suddenly lost its ability to run import games via boot disks. I think I made a thread on that a little while back. That was one was made on May 2000. Coincidentally, this particular system is the heaviest of the three. No idea why though.
It also depends what brand GD-ROM drive you have. I read that the Yamaha branded GD-ROM drives are more reliable than the Samsung ones. Don't know which one is pickier. My PAL DC has a samsung drive, no problems with yet with heavily used GD's or emu's on CD-R.
Gah! This crappy disc played fine at first, but now even the reliable DC is starting to reset when loading certain stages. Looks like I'll just have to buy a new copy of this game then.
There appear to be two small deep scratches in the middle part of the disc, and bunch of finer scratches around the outside edge. The middle spindle ring part also has loads of little hairline scratches. I've tried the Disc DR with no real improvement. I'm guessing whoever owned this previously either already resurfaced it or just didn't know how to handle his/her discs properly. Not really what I expected after the seller advertised the game as "Mint condition"...
