Dealing with scratched discs from older consoles.

So I'm recently on a gamecube kick for some reason (found my brothers old Wii and am trying to track down my old gamecube games and find some others I didn't get to play.) but I notice most of my old gamecube discs are quite scratched. Id hate to replace these games with ones I might find on eBay or something, so I'm wondering if there is a proven, safe way to remove scratches on these discs? do those stupid buffer machines work? Does gamestop or somebody offer disc cleaning services or something? I really wish we had bluray discs from the start that way there would be limited to no scratches on these older discs.

I am not sure if you have them in the area where you live, but there is a video rental store called Family Video, and those stores have disc resurfacers. They charge you like $2, and the discs look like new when they come out of the machine.

well, I just confirmed that this place I know of does something similar. apparently they have this machine that resurfaces the discs. The thing is they charge 10 bucks a disc. but honestly, I'm ok paying that if it'll actually save the discs considering these games go anywhere from 30 bucks to 70 bucks on eBay.

I can vouch for those disk buffer things. ...At least the one I've got. I Believe I have a "Disk Doctor" but it's in a box in the back of a moving truck right now so I can't confirm the name lol. I've been using it for years on scratched PS1, PS2 and Xbox (The original one) games that are so far gone they won't even read anymore. Spin them around in that thing for a minute or two and they come out spotless and work perfectly. I can't vouch for all of them, but mine looks like this and totally works. (Unless the game is chipped or cracked lol)

@therealmoot: I wish I had known those actually work before I threw away my Budokai 3 disc

Quick correction: apparently this place I know does it for between $2-$5, not 10$

I had a Disc Doctor. I can confirm it works. Unless the scratch is on the face, of course.

@therealmoot: Yeah they did help some but i'm not sure about real bad damage. I think i still have mine some where lol.

Unless they don't work there is no reason to have them repaired, I can count on one hand how many times a scratched disc caused problems in use.

@wynnduffy: I can't count on one or two hands how many of my scratched PS2 discs have caused issues. Insane load times, missing audio, hitching cutscenes and sometimes straight lockups.

Never heard of a Disc Doctor before but might consider getting one since people are saying it genuinely works.

i have fixed a scratched disk with toothpaste before.

@randiolo: I heard about that method too and tried it but didn't work for me sadly.

Personally this is the reason I started out with a SNES when it came to collecting older video games as cartridges can really take a beating and still be perfectly playable, plus if they do happen to not play then it's simpler to fix with a cotton bud and a bit of cleaning fluid, or you could use the classic method of blowing the contacts which I keep getting told does nothing but I can't help but do it instinctively.

I have used one of those disc doctors as well and they do work. They don't look like new, it leaves some buffing marks from where it resurfaced the disc, but it has fixed all my broken discs i have used it on, assuming there isn't a massive gouge in it.