RetroGaming

If you're wondering what this is about: The PS4 used to require its internal clock to be correct to play any game, even disc based ones, and the only way to do so is to connect to PSN, meaning that in a distant future when the PSN goes down (or Sony no longer allows PS4s to connect to it) all your games would become useless. And the worst part? They did all of this because of trophies.

Sony has fixed the issue on Update 9.0, but the fact that it was ever an issue and caused by a totally non-essential feature is baffling.

Remember when printers wouldn’t even warn you that the ink was out? They would just give you a weird magenta ghost of what you were trying to print.

Excuse me what's the ominous "71 days" on the Sonic Adventure game cover am I cursed now

Sega Dreamcast is not an example of a console that I would describe as "built to last". I had two and both of them died in the same way - the optical lens cracked from heat stress and stopped reading disks. There was never any warning it was about to happen, and no way to prevent it as far as I knew.

As unlucky as I was with the Dreamcast, I made up for it by only ever having to buy one Xbox 360. I still own my original console which was never refurbished and never red ringed on me.

Okay, now I know why my Dreamcast keeps asking for the time and date every time I turn it on. Always wondered, but never checked because it worked regardless.

But god forbid you unplug a controller while the console is switched on. Better know how to replace that fuse on the controller board!

(If you just bridge it with a wire, I won't tell anyone).

Game Boy cartridges not saving games due to dead battery is sad.

To be fair, there are tio many arcade boards from that exact era that have draconian DRM measures where if the CMOS dies, the decryption key is irreversibly lost, and it becomes ewaste

Is anyone else's Dreamcast yellow now?

I bought it in the year it was released and it was used quite a bit (euphemism) back then. But I dug it from the closet it was stored in and now is yellow. Remote control and all. All the consoles stored along with it still look the same. All the older ones looking the same as they always were, but Dreamcast decided to have that "we're fucking old" moment with me. Haven't tried turned it on out of fear of mortality being the next reminder it has in store for me.

Setting the clock on each boot, after the rechargable CMOS battery died, sucks. I speak from experience with Dreamcast consoles. Best you solder in a battery holder and put in a new rechargable coin cell. ... or add a diode and put in an ordinary non-rechargable.

Nothing bad even happened to a Dreamcast... Right ?

Man, I remember when I used to play the Dreamcast and awesome games like Power Stone 2 and Super Magnetic Neo! The little cartridge inside the controller was awesome too.

Then there's the og Xbox and it's clock capacitor. Nothing like grabbing your console out of storage to find out it blew a cap and dissolved some of the traces on the PCB.

Back in the Nintendo era we picked up a copy of Final Fantasy I when the local rental shop went out of business... The battery in it was 100% dead. So my brother would just leave the Nintendo on.

I don't think I've had a console affected by this though.

Recently I had an Evercade cart die. It was the flash memory that gave up, though. Not the battery.

"oh gee i sure hope no one cums in me"

The CMOS battery of my PSP 3000 died years ago :(