Do you still play any PC games on a physical disc? Or, when did you last do that?
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
Diablo 2 battle chest
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
My last physical media was the PC version of Titanfall, played in 2022 or so via USB disc drive. was surprised to find the entire game actually on the disc. Was pretty cool.
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I haven’t had a disk drive in my PC for over 10 years now. It’s a PITA even finding an inexpensive case that has front bays these days.
Yeah, they definitely aren’t seen as a necessity anymore.
However, the Silverstone FLP01 was mentioned in another community around here and I was so tempted to get one. At $150, it’s not exactly inexpensive, and I already have a perfectly good case (Fractal Design Core 500), but man I want one. The “floppy disk drives” are doors that flip down: the top one reveals an optical drive, and the bottom one reveals the USB ports.
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
I remember finally building a new PC that was halfway decent and wanting to play some quake 3 mods. So this would have been around 2005??
Broadband was here so I wanted to take advantage of that sweet low ping but needed a physical copy of the game for the mods to work.
Even then it was hard to source a game disc but I got it and had a few years of fun playing urban terror… I can’t really be bothered with online shooters now but back then it was simple, quick and fun. There’s too much going on in things like Apex and Overwatch for me.
Also my PC basically has a console setup in the living room and I play with a switch controller, so I’d get destroyed anyway!
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
Last one must have been GTA 4 (I’ve meanwhile bought this on Steam so I can play it without) or Crazy Taxi (came with a cereal box in my childhood).
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
I think it might be Star Craft for me.
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I think the last disc-based game I played was Neverwinter Nights 2. Either that or the Command and Conquer Collection. That was probably around 2014.
Nice. I was recently browsing this used bookstore near me, and C&C: Generals was sitting on the shelf in the music CD section, so I bought it. That was what got me thinking about my existing physical game collection.
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installed from disc starfleet academy and mechwarrior 2 last week with lutrus.
Sweet! Lutris is amazing, I tried it for the first time a couple days ago. One of my physical games is Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, which would not run on my Windows 10 PC, but runs just fine on my Linux PC through Lutris.
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Guild Wars 2 was on disc for me.
I have that disk too. But I don’t need it if I want to install and play the game today. Same with my Elder Scrolls Online disk or my Assassin’s Creed Unity disk. Neither GW2 nor ESO will even play with just the data on the original disks, forcing updates before becoming playable. Not sure about ACU though.
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Diablo 2 battle chest
I should still have that somewhere as well. That was one I didn’t find, but it should be around.
Do you need a battle.net account to play Diablo 2, or can you just install and play offline if you only want to play singleplayer? I haven’t been able to find a clear answer about this, since everyone talking about it these days is talking about the download-only version.
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Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn’t require the disc to play.
The most recent ones I’ve bought were only a Steam key in the box, and the DVD simply had a Steam installer on it. Nice that some have both, I haven’t actually seen one of those.
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Now I want to install a game to a disk and run it from the disk drive, my dad’s old desktop has a drive. I wonder if it can burn dvds.
Maybe I could install stardew valley to the disk.
I’ve been wanting to do this, too, for games that I bought on Steam. Like, make a bootable Linux DVD that has Steam and the game preinstalled on it, with Steam already logged in as my account.
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The last time I played a PC game on a physical disc? Can I cheat a little bit here? I found a self burned CD from old early 2008 or earlier days. There were a few RPG Maker 2000 games on it, which I downloaded from internet cafes, such as Vampires Dawn (back then, when only a German version was available for the first game in series). And I played a few of them last year with an open source RPG Maker player called EasyRPG, but with RetroArch.
So yes, I played PC games in 2024 from a physical disc. But I leave it to you, if you count that.
I’d say that absolutely counts!
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
I don’t have many disc based PC games anymore. Last I played one was less than a month ago ( don’t know exactly how long ago ) and it was Luxor. I have a few others on disc, but I either don’t have them installed or haven’t played them in a while.
Not including Luxor because I already listed it, I also currently have Super Collapse, Morrowind and Oblivion ( both with expansions ), Brok The Investigator ( have it on Steam so I don’t play the disk version or use the official collectors edition USB containing an installer either ), Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 and one of the expansions, some Dosney rollercoaster builder game that is pretty bad, and a normal blackjack game.
As for my absolute favorite, that’s the easiest question ever: Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum.
I also have another one that I loved that I cannot remember or find basically anything about it anywhere in the web because it was probably some demo to a full game that wasn’t out or didn’t release. The whole thing was a mini-golf like hole where it starts you off in front of a drive-in movie theater with cars parked parallel to the screen, like they’re parking in a parking lot at a grocers. You had to hit the ball up a ramp and into the screen, which was showing a black and white swamp film. You’d be sent into the movie and had to put around the water to get to the hole. Camera wouldn’t move unless you entered a different area. Anybody know literally anything about that?
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I’ve been wanting to do this, too, for games that I bought on Steam. Like, make a bootable Linux DVD that has Steam and the game preinstalled on it, with Steam already logged in as my account.
I was thinking it would be easier with gog games.
You can just burn the install directory to a disk and then insert the disk and launch the game without launchers
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Sweet! Lutris is amazing, I tried it for the first time a couple days ago. One of my physical games is Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, which would not run on my Windows 10 PC, but runs just fine on my Linux PC through Lutris.
yeah i used the files and got Starfleet Academy runnings on my steam deck.
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I was thinking it would be easier with gog games.
You can just burn the install directory to a disk and then insert the disk and launch the game without launchers
Oh dang, that is a good idea.
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
Morrowind was also my last. I actually ripped the files from the disk and that’s what I’m using with OpenMW now…
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Morrowind was also my last. I actually ripped the files from the disk and that’s what I’m using with OpenMW now…
Nice. I haven’t tried OpenMW yet, but I definitely want to. Are you running a bunch of mods with it?
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Like many people, I’ve been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items – movies, albums, books – used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, “Hey I like this thing on your shelf.”
PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I’ve scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents’ houses to see if they still work.
Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn’t the Steam version?
For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn’t get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.
I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.
What were (are?) some of your favorites?
Peter Pan in Disney’s Return to Never Land (2002).
A friend brought it over and, as was usually the case, I burned a copy to keep for myself. It was my first encounter with DRM, and for completely unrelated reasons, the last time I interacted with physical game media of any kind.
