I just picked up a used game - Metroid Prime for GameCube - and the disc seems to be scratched (just surface scratches though). I put the game in the machine and everything works perfectly so far. My question is: If the scratches affected the game, would I be able to tell immediately? Am I safe since it has been working fine so far?

Thanks.

I would think that just as in other disk media based entertainment that scratches in certain sectors could cause issues later as the game accesses other portions of the disk.

However, if they are only surface scratches and not bad you are probably alright.