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?
Bruh I haven’t had a computer with a disc drive in like…15 years.
Last game I played with a disc was disc golf.
I almost went that route, but kept moving my disc drive from one PC to the next just for Morrowind. I didn’t have room for it in my latest build, though (I put in a tower cooler for the first time), so I bought an external DVD drive.
So, how far can you throw those DVDs?
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.
Yeah, I had forgotten how slow an optical drive was, and how that was usually the limiting factor. I installed Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear from the original CD a couple days ago, and it took about 20 minutes to install on my current PC. I’m pretty sure that’s about how long it took in 1999, too.
Downloading it from Steam takes about 10 seconds.
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.
Last one was oblivion in 2011. New home no internet and the pc towen on the lunch table. Good memories
Oblivion was also one that I owned physically. I just assumed that I had also acquired it on Steam by now, but it looks like I haven’t. Also great memories with Oblivion. I think it’s still my 4th or 5th most-played game. (I have to guess, based on remembering the number of hours that Xfire said I had back in the day, which is a whole nother nostalgia trip right there, lol.)
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.
Why not USB-based disk reader?
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.
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.
2007, I think. I had recently moved and didn’t have internet hooked up yet, so I bought BioShock as a physical disc so that I wouldn’t have to wait. Imagine my frustration when I learned about the online-only authentication bullshit it used for DRM, so having the disc didn’t even matter; without Internet I couldn’t play the damn thing at all.
Piracy hysteria was at an absolute fever pitch in 2007 – those online activations are what make me think that much of my physical collection won’t be playable anymore.
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.
Very cool. I’ve never backed mine up; I should do that. What game was it last week?
Disc rot is a thing, so backing up a bin/cue for CDs or ISO for dvd is always a good idea (if it hasn’t been backed up already)
Monopoly 1998 was what I played last week. Nothing ran it except my XP laptop
Eragon
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.
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).
I bought GTA4 for like $8 during a Steam Sale shortly after it came out, back when Steam Sales were crazy good. An absolute steal for such a great game.
Probably Crysis.
Long enough ago that my DVD drive had sealed shut since then and I had to use a paperclip to open it.
Nice. I had borrowed a friend’s physical copy of Crysis, and that’s how I played it back in the day.
Half Life orange box, the last physical media I ever bought. 2009-10 ish. Still have the cosmetics for tf2
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?
I haven’t looked into modding yet, but from what I understand, most Morrowind mods should work seamlessly. It’s only those that need the Morrowind Script Extender, which don’t work in OpenMW.
Also, I’ve seen this website recommended before: https://modding-openmw.com/
I literally cannot remember the last time. This PC doesn’t have any optical drives and I’ve had it for like 7 years now. I did use a USB optical drive once to install a driver for something. I can’t even remember the last game I purchased that had a physical disc, honestly. I haven’t bought a game requiring a disc since living in Japan so that’s definitely a decade. Probably around 15 years, if I had to guess, and maybe even longer than that.
