Noticed that UK copies of ORAS have gotten expensive lately, so decided to pick up a Spanish version that was advertised as 'not working' since it has half the price and you can change languages anyway.
Today I've discovered that specifically PAL region physical copies of ORAS seem to be 'dying,' as in they get rendered unplayable due to either a bad ROMchip or sloppy soldering. A video by a dude called Voulthar or something seemed to make it seem like the latter was more likely, so I took apart my copy of AS and reflowed the solder on the chip - didn't fix anything. I'm inclined to believe the chips on these European cartridges are actually dying now.
So why is this the case? Seems like, funnily enough, the PAL physical copies of Persona Q and Smash are also affected. This is almost as retarded as Virtual Boy displays dying with age because Nintendo just glued them onto the contacts rather than soldering them on.