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?
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.
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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?
Half Life orange box, the last physical media I ever bought. 2009-10 ish. Still have the cosmetics for tf2
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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?
Probably Crysis.
Long enough ago that my DVD drive had sealed shut since then and I had to use a paperclip to open 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?
Very few games were playable from a CD (thrash loading speed).Usually the CD was required after install for DRM purposes only.
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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 recently checked my box with old game CDs and DVDs, just out of curiosity, not because I wanted to play something. Most of the stuff is just sentimental value/nostalgia, but there’s one promo disc/game, I tried to archive because I found nothing about it on the net, but I couldn’t even read it. Others also have read errors, but I don’t know if a better drive could still work (just have a cheap external one).
I think the last PC game I bought on disc was SC2: HotS, but I don’t even know if I ever used them, since you can just download the game, after you’ve added it to your Battlenet account. Definitely haven’t used game discs since 2014, because I remember building a PC then, putting in my old drive, but then I gave it away, because I just never needed 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?
I have some small games on hard drive storage, do hard drive platters count as discs?
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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?
The last time i used physical media for apc game would have probably been to install WoW back in like 2012
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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
Some Steam games can be played without Steam. Some require more and others less or none work to achieve that. GOG is the better choice for this task, but if you already have Steam game that could work for this, maybe no need to rebuy it on GOG. I was thinking of doing something similar to archive what can be archived, but never got around doing it. Here some resources:
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Some Steam games can be played without Steam. Some require more and others less or none work to achieve that. GOG is the better choice for this task, but if you already have Steam game that could work for this, maybe no need to rebuy it on GOG. I was thinking of doing something similar to archive what can be archived, but never got around doing it. Here some resources:
I don’t think cds and dvds hold data for too long. I guess it’s better than a hard drive.
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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’ve got a portable DVD player, and I’m going to use it to install the original Psychonauts onto my son’s computer, so he can see what the meat circus was like before they softened it.
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I don’t think cds and dvds hold data for too long. I guess it’s better than a hard drive.
There were special long lived BlueRay format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC . I was thinking of getting into, but they were expensive when I looked at it years ago. With 100 GB per disc, this might be a good solution for longtime archive (but you need the reader too…).
As for the CDs and DVDs, the longevity also highly depends on the burner, the blank disc and maybe the software and settings you used at that time. A pressed CD that you buy and its not burned can hold data for very long time, and is much more durable than your burned ones. At least compared to a mechanical hard drive you don’t need to reuse (rewrite) to not loose data. But a hard drive can hold so much data.
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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?
Starcraft 2 for me. I haven’t had an optical drive in my pc for probably 10 years or so. The last “physical” game I bought was Mass Effect Andromeda, and it was just a box with a download code inside.
PC gamers were incentivized to move away from optical media asap, since optical drives read slowly compared to HDDs, and SSDs are even faster.
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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?
Guys hi, just looking for some support share, a Fantasy Adventure Story, for all ages and just some entertain with some storyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVIvQ1wsgg - maybe you are curious
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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 get a lot of old oc games on disc from thrift stores all the time.
However once I confirm they work I back them up and continue to use them in a disc emulator.
Technically last week realistically a very long time ago.
