Newly-minted video game prototype collectors over the past decade have found themselves wondering why one-of-a-kind games in their collection kept coming up unreadable although they were perfectly usable when they first purchased the cartridge. In most cases, it's because they found themselves fiddling with the EPROM window and/or carelessly storing the cartridge until bit rot ran its course.

There was plenty of benefit to EPROMs back in the day to a developer, but long-term data retention was certainly not one of them.