Topic: How many of us have lost use of games we downloaded?

And how many of us have lost use of games on cartridges or discs that have become damaged?

The latter is a more common problem I should think.

None... I think... besides my Pokemon Red being glitched Missingno.

My SSBB and MP3 are scratched up, but I'll fix them when I get a wii u

I lost a million games that I had on floppy disks and CD's for DOS... they became obsolete. It's harder to keep a PC around than a console, although I probably can't hook up the old Atari either, and in the future, TV's won't have all the ports (remember the South Park Wii episode?). Downloading is safest really (not full proof though), if you have an account (or even can trace them to club nintendo or whatever), just not as fun.

Digital downloads might not be a problem now, but they most definitely will be in the future.

The way I see it, if I have media containing my entire game - i.e. no DLC, no online activations required etc. - then I can play that game forever. Sure, it's up to me to be careful not to lose or damage the physical media, but that's under my control. If I own a Nintendo game for my DS, and Nintendo goes out of business, I can continue playing that game. The same can't be said for digital downloads.

The thing people need to realise is that digital distribution provides short term convenience at the cost of being able to play your game indefinitely. That doesn't matter to some people, and that's fine. However, I like to play my old games and as a result, try to avoid digital distribution. (Or get games that are DRM free).

You can just send them to Nintendo to get them fixed. I I've done that with quite a few Wii games.

One of my great fears is not being able to enjoy games I downloaded later in my life, but to be honest, I haven't actually lost access to any of them yet.

Spore is the closest I am to losing a game at the moment - I think I may be on my last install before I have to contact the incompetent EA support service and grovel for a new install permission.

I think Tactics Ogre GBA is the only one I've actually lost - I bought it on ebay, and it turned out to be a bootleg, and so the battery only lasted about a year. The game itself is a giant SRPG and is unplayable without the ability to save. Same thing happened with a Donkey Kong GB cartridge, although it was probably very old rather than a bootleg, but at least I was able to play it all the way through one free afternoon without any trouble. Unlike Tactics Ogre, I've kept it around, and technically, I haven't lost it.

I haven't lost use of agame I have either download or have a physical copy of. The only issue I can foresee is a battery replacement in a Game Pak but otherwise those are nearly indestructible. I don't use my discs as coasters or a Frisbee's so I haven't had one get scratched up enough to render it unplayable.

That only happened to my Mario and Luigi partners in Time, good thing too that was not one of their best outings.

Lots, including pokemon battle revolution, zelda TP, paper mario 2, pokemon TCG, pokemon crystal and silver, harvest moon GB, 70% of my N64 games are glitchy, and like 20% of my DS games (the older ones) have an increased tendency to crash.

I also have lost like 80% of my GB, GBC and GBA games......

And I plan to download every single one of these games as the become available.

You don't have to treat discs as badly as that for them to get scratched, they can just get like that after being used a lot. I didn't mistreat my copies of MKW, Warioware: Smooth moves and SSBB but they still got like that. They were fine after they came back from Nintendo when I sent them to get fixed.

I never had scratches that bad before. Glad Nintendo was able to fix them for you.

Lost? None. Deleted and no longer care to retrieve again. Plenty. As for damaged carts or discs, none, I take good care of my things. My Pokemon games have lost their battery saves, but otherwise they play perfectly fine.

I've probably lost a couple of gaming cartridges, though I'm not much of a "retro gamer," so worrying about battery saves isn't really a factor for me (though I do wonder how my 500+ hour Pokémon Silver cartridge is holding up these days...). As for actual downloads, I lost 4 DSiWare titles I was done with when they wouldn't transfer to my 3DS (and I decided the $50 I would get for trading in my DSi was more valuable than the $11 in games on there). I'm also probably gonna lose the $30 or so in WiiWare I have on my Wii, as I'm probably not gonna get a Wii U for a few years or ever transfer them (I can't get internet to my Wii anymore since a wireless router extender I was using stopped functioning). There's also the $8 in games I have for my Mac, but I haven't gotten that into them and I can always redownload them to my future Mac I'll be getting for college. So, that total comes to $11 I've lost and another $40 I could potentially lose. I don't want to even think about everything on my 3DS right now...

My copy of Digimon World 3 won't load parts of the desert area, so I can't beat it. And my copy of Pokemon Red's save battery died.

Me. I'm sending my 3DS in to Nintendo later this summer though, and hopefully they'll give me the 50 games I lost back.