they might not much longer, batteries and finite life and all that.
but at least you can slap new batteries in them and the game
will still fucking work, and not permanently taken away from you because you took to long to go back and replay it.
board eaten by corrosion? 98% chance someones reverse engineered it and posted the pcb design files online for you to get made via one of the PCB companies.
Hell, even if the chip holding the game itself dies, you can replace it and flash the new game from a rom file and be back to playing on your console again, at relatively minimum cost.
But modern disk gets scratched? Hope it still works… If it doesnt, well, you’re only hope is modding the console to boot a burnable disk or buy a new copy.
they might not much longer, batteries and finite life and all that.
but at least you can slap new batteries in them and the game will still fucking work, and not permanently taken away from you because you took to long to go back and replay it.
also, cartridges are repairable.
Battery dies?
Easily replaced.
save ROM fails? Easily replaced.
board eaten by corrosion? 98% chance someones reverse engineered it and posted the pcb design files online for you to get made via one of the PCB companies.
Hell, even if the chip holding the game itself dies, you can replace it and flash the new game from a rom file and be back to playing on your console again, at relatively minimum cost.
But modern disk gets scratched? Hope it still works… If it doesnt, well, you’re only hope is modding the console to boot a burnable disk or buy a new copy.
Not all cartridges have batteries in them.
Most the ones with internal storage for save files do.