One DS Cart's Amazing Journey

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I feel like a 7-year-old after this close encounter with destruction that one of my DS cartridges recently experienced. It's certainly something that you'd think a kid, not a responsible 34-year-old, would do.

It's not odd for a DS cart to travel across the world and find itself in exotic places; the DS is a portable platform, after all. But I never expected a DS cart to survive a journey that I unknowingly subjected it to this week.

I took a Bay Area Rapid Transit train and then a San Francisco Muni bus to the Bitmob community gathering last Friday at the Buckshot Bar & Gameroom. I didn't want to carry a bag with me, so I brought my DS and a couple of games in my pocket. I played New Super Mario Bros. and the roguelike Shiren the Wanderer as I traveled.

I got home pretty late (it takes a long time to travel from San Francisco to Dublin via public transportation, and the wife wanted me to get some milk). I threw my pants into the laundry basket. I did remove my DS, keys, and cellphone. But Shiren the Wanderer stayed in my pants. And that wasn't the only place it went -- it took a magical journey through lands of bubbles and dry, warm wind gusts.

In other words, it went through the laundry.

I've never put a videogame through the laundry before. Generally, I take great pains to make sure nothing's in the pockets of our clothes when I do laundry, but I was trying to get several things finished at once, so I forgot to check. Sometimes, that's not so badâ€”I don't mind finding a couple of dollar bills or some change in the dryer. But I got nervous when I saw a DS cart sitting in the bottom of a tumbler.

I feared that I had ruined the game. I sat the cart on the table in the living room next to my DS, and I decided that I'd figure out if it was working in the morning. I was certain that a DS cart wouldn't survive a trip through a soapy cold-water cycle and then a hot dryer.

I was wrong. I put Shiren into my DS, and I was astonished when the DS read the cart. It worked! I then started the game and saw the title screen and heard the opening music. I played it for 10 minutes and encountered no issues.

I couldn't believe it. Nintendo warns that DS carts can't take high temperatures or liquids. But maybe these little carts are tougher than we think.

How many of you have stories about games narrowly escaping disaster -- or horror stories about their destruction?

(8)

Toby Davis

July 17, 2009

I was living in charlotte, NC and I was in 5th grade at the time. The game at the time of my tale was either that shooting game set in the western era that scrolled up and made you keep going(Awesome game)or that ninja game where you were a black or red ninja jumping through trees really fast killing people (both nes games.

Becuase I forgot to make my bed one morning before I went to school. After school I walked into my room and saw everything trashed and all my toys thrown away. Dad walks in and says that is what you get for not making your bed. Then he walks over to my nintendo takes that and the cartridges out side to the drive way. Watching him smash it was one of the hardest things I had to live through. He only broke it cause that was also report card day. Needless to say my math got better after that day.

Mike Hawkins

Your Dad's dickhead rating was ultra high.

@Mike - He had a low tolerance for not following the simple rules when i was growing up. We wont go into other punishments.

Demian Linn

Whoa. That's worse than a DS cart in the laundry :(

Andrew Gregory

Nice story. Videogames, with us through thick and thin.

Dan "Shoe" Hsu

If I were you, I'd save to another save slot ASAP!

I actually lost my carrying case with all my "in rotation" DS games. I'm SO upset. Lost Advance Wars, Age of Empires, Puzzle League, and a few more. All those saves...lost forever....

Christian J Carpenter

As long as its dried out nothing can really go wrong, the water will create a short if electricity goes through it. Or do the carts still have a battery in them?

Joe Atienza

July 19, 2009

Sometime in elementary school (maybe it was 5th grade, too), a friend found a Mortal Kombat SNES cart sitting in his desk. It was probably left there by some kid from a previous class session. Instead of keeping it himself, he decided we should try and mess it up by scratching up the connector piece that protrudes from the space at the bottom. We took pens, pencils, scissors, anything and just ran it along the inside of the cart. A few days later, he grew tired to this and just gave it to me. I took it home, popped it in, and surprisingly it still worked.

Some years later, I did the same thing to a copy of Super Mario Kart 64 another friend had found in his backyard. After attempting to destroy it, I put it in my N64 and that, too, still worked.

In comparison, I recently discovered my copy of Mass Effect was rendered almost unreadable because I left it sitting on my desk, cover-side up, with nothing to protect the disc's surface from my (supposedly) clean desk surface. It's a reminder of how fragile the disc medium is.

Needless to say, I don't entirely miss the days of cartridges.;D