Okay. Experimented a bit. Tried throwing in Vampire Chronicle, thinking it was possible that for some bizarre reason this drive liked Japanese discs instead of US ones. Seeing as how it couldn’t really recognize GDs at all in my earlier tries, this seemed unlikely — and indeed it didn’t work.

But get this. I mentioned that CDs work, right? I stuck in the Game Shark, and it booted just fine. The GS is, of course, on a normal CD rather than a GD. So things will boot. It’s just that the drive doesn’t know what to make of GD discs.