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Most cartridge-based games that keep save-data use a battery to back it up. As we all know, batteries don't last forever and eventually they will run dry. The big question is when that will happen.

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NES
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In the case with NES games, the battery usually only powers a low-power (or a very-low-power) SRAM chip.
The battery used is in most cases the CR2032, which according to specs can provide about 220mAh at 25 degrees Celsius (which corresponds to approximately 790C). This value is when the voltage the battery provides has depleated to only 2V. Three things should now be noted:

• Very-low-power SRAM chips can usually retain data down to only 1.5V, which means that the battery may provide more charge before your savegame goes.
  
• The diodes blocking the batteries off during usage has a forward voltage drop-off, typically about 0.7V for most diodes, which means that the gain in charge from the previous note practically doesn't have any effect.
  
• The voltage-time graph in the battery specs shows that the battery's own drop-off voltage (when depleated) is sudden enough for none of this to matter.

We can then calculate the expected lifetime based on the SRAM specs. Most very-low-power SRAM chips will typically drain 0.3 to 0.4uA in standby mode. Dividing the charge on the drain therefore tells us that the average lifetime of a typically battery-backed NES cartridge is around 70 years (+/- 10) at 25 degrees Celcius. As all battery-backed NES cartridges I have seen still retains data, this seems to still be a valid estimate, and it's nice to know that they may hold data for another half century to come.

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GameBoy/GameBoy Color
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The other class of cartridge systems I have looked at is Gameboy games. After examining quite a lot of those, I see that two different batteries were used. Older games, usually from 2000 and earlier, uses a whimpy CR1616 battery cell with only about 55mAh (200C). Later cartridges has the CR2025 cell, with 150mAh (540C). There are no diodes, and instead a MM1134 Battery/Power switcher (or equalent) is used (0.3V voltage drop-off, 0.3uA drain). Again, due to the reasons above, the voltage drop-offs are neglected in my calculations, but there are some resistors to reduce the current drain (I estimate it to be around 0.4uA instead of the expected 0.7uA, but this may be quite inaccurate). Lastly, cartridges with a Real-Time clock function (Like 2nd gen Pokemon games) also needs the battery to power the MCB3 chip (which has an unknown but very signifficant drain). Calculating the charge over drain again, we get:

• Old MCB1 games with the CR1616 are expected to retain data for 15 years +/- 5 years. About now, in other words.
  
• Old games with the CR2024 are expected to retain data for 40 years, so still no worries there.
  
• I'm unable to find the expected life of cartridges with a RTC, but as a matter of fact; some of them died as little as only 7 years after manufacture. Because of this, I find that they must drain more than 2uA which is more than 5 times as much as the regular cartridges. With a replacement CR2032 in place of the CR2024, I find that these will still only last about 10 years.

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Conclusion:
You don't need to worry about the batteries in your NES games yet, but you should be aware that the time is running out for the batteries in the earliest GameBoy games. We all know about the GameBoy RTC games already, and I think we all can agree that's it's a major and unfortunate design flaw.

I haven't looked at SNES, N64 or GBA cartridges yet, so I can't say anything about those.

This fall is a magnifficent time for gamers. With more than a handfull of highly anticipated AAA titles being released about simoultaneously, there is no denying that the video game industry is in a mighty position at the time. Allthough the industry is only a third of a century old, it has already surpassed the more-than-a century old film industry, and it's still keeping momentum as seen by this years game releases.

But the state of the industry has changed greatly over the years, and the phenomenon of videogames has changed likewise. While Videogames originally started out as exotic techological wonders, they are today an everyday form of entertainement. This is not only a change in the industry, but a change in how we, ourselves, look at videogames. However. Despite continously new technology and ever-increasing experience, the developers has latley shifted more than ever towards a mainstream marketing model heavily based on never-ending franchises. "Why?" you may ask, and the reason is clear: Demand. A demand always mean money, and as the average Joe doesn't nessecarely like too much of a change, the end result is never-ending franchises. This demand has in the last decade exploded, which has driven the industry into it's curent state.

Allthough the definition of "Demand" is general, an actual demand is not. With demand comes anticipation and with anticipation comes expectations, and in the case of this fall's AAA titles; Great expectations (no, I'm not talking about the Charles Dickens novel). These expectations has a direct influence on how we judge games, and unlike demand, expectation can be a general term. In other words, many gamers these days have general expectations for any game, and these expectations are much higher than they were ten years ago.

The effect of this expectation is one of the developers biggest pains. If a team of developers know that the audience has great expectations for the title in development, that alone will put a lot of strain on the entire development team which in turn puts even more strain on the development process. As the game itself reflects this development process, the strain will have some effect on the final game's expression. In the worst case scenario the strain can become too great and the development process will break completely down, something which leaves the final game signifficantly inferior to what it could have been (not as of rating, but as of attitude and lasting expression). This strain is what I call "The ghost of Great Expectations", and one of it's most evident victims is "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess"[*].

When it comes to this fall's AAA releases, there is no denying that they will get high review scores and that people will enjoy playing through them. But what will we think about them in 2021?

([*] In the case of Twilight Princess, the development process broke completely down about halfways through - as revealed by the "Iwata Asks" interview sessions about the game. It is also apparent in the game itself, as much of the second half completely looses it's attitude toward the player. The game suddenly becomes vast, the dungeons becomes repetetative and the atmosphere feels empty.)

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Addendum:
There will always be games that aren't affected by "The ghost of Great Expectations". These are usually the games which were made "just for the fun of it", with no intention of pleasing a demanding audience. Some examples of such games are the original "Portal", "Minecraft" and the upcoming "Rayman: Origins".

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim looks gorgeous and awesome, but there is one detail in the trailer that really annoys me.

At one point, there is a guy sharpening his axe on a stonewheel. The main problem is that he is running the stone in the wrong direction, and he is actually blunting the axe! When you sharpen blades manually, you are supposed to direct the blade against the motion of the wheel, not along it!!!

I know this is a microscopic detail, but for me these small details shines up and I can't stop thinking about them. Aargh!

In this post I will describe how I have put together my library of Wii games. What I am trying to acheive is to get some feedback if it's decent or not, or if I missed out on some "Must have" titles. This topic is also open for discussion/oppinions about the choice of games/genres and your own libraries.

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All release-dates are based off the Europeian releases.

Initially when I got myself a Wii around 2009, I went for the top-selling games with good reviews. At that time the Wii had been around long enough to get quite a few good titles, so I had plenty of "must have"s to choose from. Eventually I figured that at one point, I had two games from each year the Wii had been in production, and since I'm quite bond to systematical thinking, I just decided to keep it that way.

Then came 2010, with several promising titles. I made a quick decission, and decided to expand to two games from each year. I already had a complete set of potential 2nd choice games from the earlier years, so this was no problem. Eventually I decided to trade in Metroid, other M for Donkey Kong Country Returns, for various reasons.

Recently I decided to expand to three titles from each year, which I have concluded to be a final choice. The reason for this is actually due to the viral "Operation Rainfall", which drew my interest to especially Xenoblade. I had already decided on the two games from this year, where there was no room for a third one. Because of this, I added the curious third choice, which consists of games that aren't nessecarely amazingly good, but rather obscure and/or interesting games of at least decent quality.

A note on the selection of games. I have tried to make my library of games quite varied and evenly distributed among the genres, except for 1st Person Shooters and Hack'n Slash games because I simply don't like those genres. Because of this, I am problably not going to buy the upcoming Kirby game as I already have a bunch of 2D platformers. I didn't buy the Wario-land Wii game for the 3rd choice either for the very same reason. I also considered at one point to buy Paper-Mario, but I figured it was too-much a step backwards from the Paper-Mario I know from the N64 and GameCube.

1st choice:
2006: The legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess
2007: Super Mario Galaxy
2008: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
2009: Wii Sports Resort
2010: Super Mario Galaxy 2
2011: (upcoming title) The legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword

2nd choice:
2006: Wii Sports
2007: Metroid Prime 3, Corruption
2008: Mario Kart Wii
2009: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2010: Donkey Kong Country Returns
2011: Kirby's Epic Yarn

Curiosity 3rd choice:
2006: Gottlieb Pinball Classics (AKA: Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection)
2007: WarioWare, Smooth Moves
2008: Worms, a Space Oddity
2009: Line Rider Freestyle (AKA: Line Rider 2 Unbound)
2010: Disney's Epic Mickey
2011: (upcoming title) Xenoblade Chronicles

(PS: Allthough the Pinball and Linerider games are only decent at best, I only payed a bargain for them. Generally the rest of the third choice games, except for the upcoming Xenoblade game, was bought quite cheap on Ebay.co.uk. For all 5 of them, including shipping; I spent about the same amount I would spend on one top-class new game here in Norway.)