PSOne discs are dirty. Limit Break has trouble loading. How to resolve?

I am playing through the original Final Fantasy VII, on a PS2 with the original PSOne discs. I'm only a few hours in, but Tifa's Limit Break is causing the game to sit on a close up of the enemy until I take the disc out, wipe it with a soft cloth, and put it back in.

There are some small circular splodges on there (water drops?) and a few scratches. I'm worried that I will get further into the game and hit a section of the disc that doesn't want to load.

How can I mitigate this?

Solution 1:

You can try cleaning the disc, with some glasses cleaner and a soft cloth. Spray a bit of the cleaner on the cloth, and then wipe from the center to the edge of the disc. This ought to remove most spots, although it won't do much for scratches.

If that doesn't seem to help, most stores that sell used games (ie, your local used game shop) have a machine that can resurface discs. This isn't a perfect solution, but if cleaning it yourself has failed, it can help.

Finally, you might consider playing on a PC with an emulator - PCs tend to have a bit more error resiliency, and you might even be able to back up the disc to your PC's hard drive, thus reducing the need to depend on an unreliable disc.