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Bad News for Users Wishing to Backup Their Gamecube Games

If you are an owner of a Nintendo GameCube video game system and want to create backup copies of your favorite games, then there is some bad news.

The Nintendo Gamecube is a sophisticated gaming system that uses a special optical media that prevents users from making backup copies of their software collection.

Launched in November 2001 as the hailed successor to the Nintendo 64 game system, the Nintendo GameCube was Nintendo's first optical media based system. While the game discs are a lot cheaper to produce for Nintendo, the fact that the discs are a special size prevents players from making backup copies of their purchased software.

The GameCube's game discs are a special optical disc technology developed by Nintendo specifically to prevent unauthorized backup copies of the software to be produced. The discs are three inches in diameter and hold a massive 1.5 gigabytes of data. This is quite impressive, considering Sega's Game Disc technology found on Dreamcast software is the size of a regular CD and only holds one gigabyte of data.

The Gamecube game discs are a miniature DVD, capable of holding 1.5 gigabytes of data. Blank pieces of this media are not available to home users, so it is impossible to create backups of your games.

Instead of being normal CDs, the miniature discs are a variety of DVD type media. Even with a DVD burner, users are still unable to create backups due t o the special size of the disc media that Nintendo uses.

Besides the problems with the size of the game discs, there are also no modchips available for the GameCube gaming console. For those who are unaware, a modchip is a device that allows video game systems to play backup copies of games. Even if you were able to successfully burn a backup game disc, the fact that no modchips exist would render the game unplayable on your Gamecube.

Because the Gamecube has been out since 2001, and no modchips have yet to be released, it is pretty much a given that no modchip developers will be creating a modchip for the system anytime soon.

Because of the lack of a Gamecube modchip, as well as the inability to create backup copies of games, the only viable solution to the problem is to purchase an extra copy of the game.

The only real alternative users have to getting backup copies of their Gamecube games is to search used video game outlets, as well as the internet for cheap copies of your games. Many used games can be purchased on Ebay for a modest price, while used video game stores can often have your favorite games for nearly half of what you originally payed for.

Another option is to remember to take care of your Gamecube game discs. Keep the discs clean, and always store them in their original cases to protect them. If you are careful, and keep your original games in perfect working order, you do not really have to worry much about having a backup copy of a particular game.

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info -- the home of the popular tool for windows online backup -- Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/bad-news-for-users-wishing-to-backup-their-gamecube-games.html