I dug out a really old Edge magazine recently. It's from November 1993, and I thought it was pretty amusing. I remember the cynicism too when games began using CD technology (motion video games, interactive media that was as exciting as flipping through an encyclopedia) but it's funny to look back at something like this..
"Compact disc is not the saviour of the video game. The CD is a storage device - and not a particularly clever one at that...
You can't get information off disc fast enough to eed today's data-hungry machines. You can't instantly switch between sets of data: it takes time for the laser to move from one point on the disk to another. You can't write information to a disk and they're a lot less robust than cartridges or even floppy disks.
The truth is that you can do nothing with a CD, except store information. It is dumb and blind and stupid. And contrary to popular belief, a CD in itself does nothing to increase the quality of the graphics....."
So I guess the moral of the story is to never write off the potential of new technology.. [;)]
quote:Originally posted by Maitrek
I remember the first couple of games that came out on CD -> Sherlock Holmes, Megarace (with that eff-wit host Lance something or other), 7th Guest etc.
Thanks a lot for bringing back those nightmares of Megarace. I thought I had completely forgotten about that game until now! :P
That was the third issue of Edge magazine ever, btw.. In the mag, they had a round up of console machines, and it's surprising to see how many there were at the time (we're talking cd based, pre-PSX times). And there was a special on that old chestnut "sex and violence in games" spread in there. I'm sure magazines will still be focusing on that after another decade. Reading up on the attitude and cynicism on the then new cd technology has changed my attitudes towards the Phantom console somewhat. Although I doubt the Phantom console will take off due to the extremely tough competition, but the idea that games are distributed online, who knows, could be what's considerable the norm in another 5-10 years.
It's interesting to note that games have become larger than what a normal cd can hold now. I would have never thought that one day, we'd be able to fill an entire cd with game content. These days, pc games are coming on more than one cd (which reminds me, the pc market is really lagging behind with the idea of games on dvd)..
Heh, remember Wing Commander 4, coming on like 5 CDs? @:-D Sure, the gameplay was minimal, but so many CDs!
The slow uptake on PC DVD titles is probably a good ol' catch 22. There won't be more games released on DVD unless more games are released on DVD. Consoles have them standard, and the uptake of DVD drives in PCs is still pretty slow as far as I'm aware. And off the top of my head, all I can think of on DVD for PC is Metal Gear Solid 2. Still yet to play that...
One of the reasons DVD's don't seem to be a huge priority is the amount of data you can fit on multiple CD's, and also the amount of data you can fit on a users HD.
Back when games first got released on CD, cd's were bigger than the average hard drive! (around 540 meg), and to get the same amount of data on floppys would take a couple hundred (assuming a full cd). These days users have huge hard-drives, much bigger than a standard (4.2 gig) dvd, allowing the entire game to be installed on the HD, and not ahve to "swap disks" during the game. Also it would only take around 8 CD's to fill one dvd, so it's not such a big deal. My thoughts anyway.
CYer, Blitz
That guys sounds particularly ignorant :) But there was alot of hype that I think needed to be played down at the time.
I remember the first couple of games that came out on CD -> Sherlock Holmes, Megarace (with that eff-wit host Lance something or other), 7th Guest etc. Nothing really new, but we hadn't really moved on from the ol' adventure game static-environment/background stuff, 3D had hardly erupted on the scene back then (Doom was just coming out? Or was out?). Seemed like live action was the way to go, but obviously it wasn't.
What really helped the CD out was when we started getting machines that could process alot of data (textures, environments, sounds) etc all dynamically (making more dynamic games), then a cheap easy way to store and transfer the information without using 50+ disks was handy.
Speculation's a funny thing sometimes if it's put into print and looked back upon :)