Are magnets bad for GBA/DS games?

[Vinny]

Pretty self explanatory but I store all my GBA/DS games in cabinets. The cabinet doors have magnets to hold them shut.

Now, while the magnets are small and don't make direct contact with the games, I'd still rather not take any risks.

 

[yayece]

It's probably ok.

 

[ma]

There's no magnetic storage (e.g. hard disks) in GBA carts. I wouldn't sweat it.

 

[Kerig]

Floppy Disks, Zip Disks, VHS, Beta, Cassette, Mini DV (IIRC) and Hard drives. These are the only creatures that fear the magnet.

The fear comes from the fact that their data is actually written on a form of magnetic media. If it's solid state like a flash card (ie SD cards and DS games), there's only magical writing involved, not magnetic spinning.

FYI: if the GBA cart has a battery save, magnets won't hurt those either.

 

[Ruahrc]

All legit GBA games don't use battery save as you lose your saves if the battery runs out. All the legit carts use flash memory to save (again not susceptible to magnets)

The small magnets holding the doors closed are so weak and so far away that there is absolutely no chance they could ruin magnetic data, probably not even if you took a HD and swung it around right next to the magnets.

Ruahrc

 

[BlueLobstah]

Actually a magnet of that type should not affect a hard drive at all. Most hard drives have several magnets embedded inside for different functions, so unless you have a very powerful magnet it is not going to affect a hard drive.

Anyway, I seriously doubt the door magnets are strong enough to do any kind of damage even if the cart was held very close.

 

[DarkKnightCecil]

They shouldn't ruin the games.