I have never noticed disc rot on any game discs. I own hundred of Dreamcast gd-roms and none of them have rot. I see people online claim Dreamcast games get rot but I've never experienced it myself. These are all games I've bought over the year on Ebay. I have no had any issues what so ever. I've even opened up some of the cheaper sealed games I have and no issues what so ever. I have seen rot on any ps1 game discs either. I've only experienced rot on laserdiscs.

... and you probably never had laser rot on a LD Single (12cm/8") either for the same reason.

If it's a single side, there is no gluing happening between 2 platters. This is where oxydation can happen for dual-sided LDs.

I have cases of rotten CDs and SACDs but clearly the manufacturing was of very poor quality level to begin with.

Julien

You're calling out the misinformation too then. There's people making bogus topics about supposed rot on their game discs. I think people are leaving game discs close to the sun or have them on the ground getting scratched up which over time can leave little tiny see through holes through the layer of the disc. That isn't rot. That's someone not caring for the discs. I think people have that confused. I actually do have Dreamcast games that were left out of cases and were damaged like that. They were damaged by myself and my late brother for leaving the disc out of the case.

I’ve only ever had rot from very early LDs or PDO UK audio CDs.

Most of my games on discs are 16 or 32-bit with %99 of those being pressed in Japan. The earliest CDROM I have is probably from 1988, or whatever year one was for PC Engine CDROM2. By the time DVDROM came around I was buying way fewer current gen stuff so I don’t have a lot to say about that era. I have a lot of DC game, mostly US and JP with a few EU. No rot on any of them.

Most of the LD users obsessed with rot seem to have only gotten into LD to make themselves victims of rot. They keep buying multiple copies of known rotters over and over for YEARS and just keep complaining about it. I used to think they were incapable of learning but I eventually realize they aren’t LD fans or movie fans…their like some kind of vigilante rot buster who continues to demonize factory workers from 30 years ago. They have learned. They learned they like doing that.

Gamers are worse but easier to understand. They break most everything by dropped it, cramming it with food, or leaving it on the floor of their car in August.

I say this with confidence because:

1: I’ve been collecting video games for 45 years or more, I still have most of it, and most of it still works. I have a lot of “famously unreliable” stuff still in very good working condition.


2: I’ve spent time working in a game store and trade-ins are DISGUSTINGLY BROKEN quite often.


I also think that a lot of bad copies of things aren’t rotted. They were defective. Always. It just gets traded into the next guy over and over with every person discovering the “rot” with nobody ever just chucking it in the trash.

When people say “rot” you have to pretty much dismiss it at once. They’re almost always misidentifying it. If it’s a copy of Tekken 3 and the guy is wearing a Rick and Morty shirt my first question would be “How can you know there’s rot when it has so many scratches I can’t even read the title?” Or perhaps, “Yeah, Taco Bell sauce does that.”

I own many CDs and I have played thousands of CDs in my entire life and never have I come across one that would not play. I recently played some really old CDs from my collection that were more than 40 years old and they still play fine. I can say the same thing about all original DVDs and BluRay discs that I have owned and / or played in my life. Even very scratched CDs often play without any issues or almost no issues.
I only have a single Japanese laserdisc from 82 or 83 that is almost unplayable. All other Japan manufactured LDs are basically perfect. And those laserdiscs that do exhibit rot (mostly PDO/DADC of course) already did so more than 20 years ago when I bought them and their rot status has not deteriorated ever since.
The only format that I had severe problems with was the HD DVD format. Only the Japanese discs made in Japan are entirely unproblematic.

No but I had this happen to a CD-ROM once.

Are we on rot again

Its 2025 the last LD made was in 2001 that is 24 years ago.
If you still have rot on the brain for LDs go away.

I didn't make this topic about laserdiscs. If you even took the couple minutes to read my posts you would see I was talking about people complaining about rot on games.

You made your topic on a laserdisc forum about optical disc rot.
Rot on optical discs is so boring.

I had that same phenomena happen to some EMI CDs made in the early 90's in the UK.
The EMI copies made in the Netherlands marked as EMI Uden were not affected.

I spoke with EMI UK at the time and they would not admit that there was any manufacturing issue.
This was decades before discogs.com existed but when it started I was able to see that other people were listing the same titles and describing them as having a frosted ice effect on the play surface.

I have 2 full shoe boxes of EMI UK CDs affected by this issue - most are CD singles but some are also albums.

What do we have here if not topic regurgitation.

My experiences mirror most others here. I've not really had discs go bad. The LDs rotters I have encountered were all rather notorious ones... Bad Boys, Starship Troopers, Eraser etc... I have received some bad anime dvds, especially Witch Hunter Robin but additional research showed the first three volumes had terrible initial pressings and Bandai did a re-issue on them within a year. All the collection releases are safe from these discs unless someone swapped for some reason. I have probably brought this up before.

Any idea what it is?

EMI did agree to allowing me to send a few sample discs for investigation.
They told me they used isopropyl alcohol to clean off the frosty layer allowing the discs to play again.
The problem was this was only a temporary solution. They frost over again in a few years time so you need to keep doing this which is far from ideal.
All my CDs were kept in the exact same environment and it was only these particular ones manufactured from around 1992-1994 by EMI Swindon that exhibited this issue.
They tried to tell me it was due to exposure to specific gases in my home but discogs confirms otherwise since it affected the exact same CDs purchased by other people.
It's worth pointing out I don't use any form of gas as a heating or cooking source in my home and almost never use aerosol based products.
No explanation was ever given by EMI why only these CDs from this period were affected and they never offered any exchange or compensation.

I can’t help but wonder about the cases they were in.

That's a good point and one EMI raised. In my case I had stored everything in its original packaging which did vary.
The CD singles predominantly came in the usual slimline plastic cases, although a few came in Z shape plastic cases that hold 2 CDs.
The albums mostly came in normal CD plastic cases with the usual grey trays that have been in use for over 40 years.
One limited edition album came in a 2 CD digi-pak with plastic trays and cardboard outer packaging.
Ironically one of the CDs in this digipak was fine even to this day and the other isn't and went frosty.

When I received the cleaned CDs back from EMI back, I placed them in regular CD album cases with no sleeve notes and put them in a shoe box.
Within 2 years all of the cleaned discs started to frost over again to varying degrees.
I also placed a few other EMI UK CDs in this same box (manufactured from this same era) that had never exhibited problems - they are all still fine to this day.

Different issue, but these images of a Super Famicom music CD were recently posted, looks like the disc is from Toshiba-EMI and it was rotted on the part that didn't have any printing on the label side of the disc:
https://x.com/zen_nif/status/1875785084521087363

EMI did agree to allowing me to send a few sample discs for investigation.
They told me they used isopropyl alcohol to clean off the frosty layer allowing the discs to play again.
The problem was this was only a temporary solution. They frost over again in a few years time so you need to keep doing this which is far from ideal.
All my CDs were kept in the exact same environment and it was only these particular ones manufactured from around 1992-1994 by EMI Swindon that exhibited this issue.
They tried to tell me it was due to exposure to specific gases in my home but discogs confirms otherwise since it affected the exact same CDs purchased by other people.
It's worth pointing out I don't use any form of gas as a heating or cooking source in my home and almost never use aerosol based products.
No explanation was ever given by EMI why only these CDs from this period were affected and they never offered any exchange or compensation.[/quote]

I remember disclord posted something about putting rainx on his discs, that some manufacture told him that was the best thing to do?
There is a topic about it, rainx or rain-x.

I also remember, possibly you? Posted about CDs that had early rot to flip the disc in the case as the top title side of the CD would get rotted
and if flipped they didn't, I think PDO? were the CDs. or maybe I read this on another forum?

I did post about rotted PDO CDs on this forum but not specifically about flipping the disc in cases.
I originally had about 100 PDO CDs that turned bronze in colour and often stopped playing.
This issue was well documented at the time and PDO setup a return facility in Blackburn UK to get replacements.
I managed to get about 95 out of those 100 replaced and they are all fine to this day.
I still see a fair few of those dodgy old bronze editions for sale on Ebay and discogs.com to unsuspecting buyers.

That disc is trashed. An ex-rental. Likely the “rot” is caused by some moron or series of morons grinding the lacquer off the top over the years. Likely the printing physically, not optically or chemically, protected half the disc.

We’d have to see it to be sure but this looks EXACTLY like what I mean when I say rot is usually misidentified abuse. If this is the only copy of this disc with the “issue” then I’d say you can disregard rot completely. As it is that is way too old and effed up of a copy of anything to be certain of a manufacturing defect.

I have PDO discs with pinholes like that but they are otherwise mint, never saw extended UV light, no scratches. That’s what “rot” is.

Yeah, I actually bought one, and after reading all this stuff surprisingly it did play fine last time I played it
a few years ago.