Playing without the disc
 

I recently rented a game for Gamecube from Blockbuster and the day before I had to return it I forgot the Gamecube was on and took the disc out (don't ask me how I forgot). However, I was still able to play, move around my character and all that no matter how many times I opened or closed the cover as long as the power didn't turn off. I consider this an advantage because it won't overheat as long as the laser wasn't used, but I'm concerned this might be a problem in the future. Is this a problem or am I overreacting?

The game runs until a part where disk reading is needed, like beating a level or entering a town.

Edit - If your game keeps running even after those kinds of things, what game is it?

Animal Crossing, which I rented for my sister and I decided to play for myself to see how it is.

Interesting. Ive done this with Computers before, but that is entirely different. Seems like it wouldnt damage the system, but playing without the disc obviously means the 'Cube cant read from the disk, therefore, depending on how the game is written, whenever you enter a new area, change weapons, ect, ect, that would cause a disk read, it would crash. Probably the only reason why you could do this was because the area/situations you were at in that point of the game were stored to RAM, which is a good probability.

Edit: Dang, you guys post fast, thats two in the time it took for me to write this, and im not slow ;)

The game wouldn't crash, just it would tell you to insert __________ game CD. Thsi works on PS2 as well (I'm not sure about XBox, I haven't tried it).

The thing is, it kept playing and the messages, "Insert yada yada" or "Please close disc cover" never showed.

My mistake, being a PC and Console owner, i play both, and when you do it to a computer, the game crashes, of course, in my opinion, asking for the disk is the same effect in a more stable way :p
Pretty ironic how consoles are more stable, but, when you think about it, less complexity is generally easier to maintain.

Animal Crossing must not have many moments where you need the disk to be read.

Or, if all you did by playing was run around on the map and enter a house or two, then I'm not surprised. But if you triggered events and stuff, then I am.

If not the disc, it probably ran on both the internal clock of the Gamecube and the Memory Card, but however, I'm worried this sort of thing would affect future gameplaying.

I doubt it. Usually, if there will be any effect on future gameplay it'll happen immediately. Such as, your motor suddenly stops working. You notice that. Electronic components (such as a processor or RAM) have a theoretically infinite lifespan, so unless you're using it as a volleyball you'll be fine.

Thank god. Thanks everyone for help.

Guess I'm gonna have to cancel that beach game....

Interesting, I was actually going to compile a list of games and what their effects were/how long you can play before an error without the cd. This works with any CD-based system. Many games store their music on the CD itself, so when you eject the CD, you will not be able to hear anything, or, just the sounds. This is how RAM works--the games temporarily store data and only access when they need to. Some games simply crash. Most of the time, level-loads will crash, because it needs to access the CD to even start temporarily loading. Animal Crossing most likely has CD load points. Just try playing the game and wait till you hear the "vzztveetvzzt" of the gamecube reading a disc.

There's really no advantage to it. Since I'm burning and testing ps2 games constantly, there's no time to "properly" turn off the ps2 (even though there is no proper way), so I'm always ejecting during play. Then I mess around till I get a crash.

Btw: animal crossing kicks fucking ass.