Googleshng:
I think I'll bypass the obvious joke about how loudly the Dreamcast spins disks and take this seriously. A CD drive isn't really as fragile as you'd think. If you're willing to take the fairly small risk of breaking something, you could try just reaching in there and wiggling stuff around. On the other hand, if it's just the very edge of the CD rubbing up against something, it won't do anything to it. There's a decent margin that would have to be eroded before you hit the data.

Googleshng:
As far as having to kill major characters over and over before it sticks, well, it's only fair. How many times do you have to die in a game before you get discouraged and wander off? The hardest fight I can think of in any game I've played is the end of SaGa Frontier 2. It's just flat out insane. FF8 did the whole enemies level up as you do deal, which I always like, but in this case it didn't really increase the challenge enough that it's not a question of sleeping through it. My favorite Summon has always been Bahamut, don't know why, probably because it's usually the best one. Finally, once I had a game of Tetris that was going so unbelievably well I just got sick of it and had to go. I think I was up in the 20s level wise.

The Last Laugh: