"The bigger the adventure, the better the game (in theory) and for big games what better platform than CD-ROM. We’ll say straight off then that Zelda’s Adventure is possibly the best suited game so far licensed for Philip’s CD-i machine. Zelda games have been massive hits for the SNES and Game Boy due mainly to their drawn out explorative gameplay and complexity. So imagine, if that same quality of gameplay can be matched on the CD-i, but ehanced dramatically with beautiful photo definition graphics."
Computer and Video Games, Issue 152, July 1994
"The single most underrated component of video and computer games since their inception has been sound. Music, speech and sound effects can all be tremendousiy significant elements in the creation of a successful game, yet only in the past few years has this significance been exploited by software and hardware developers. Three things have been paramount in creating this burgeoning audio revolution: sound boards, 16-bit videogame systerns, and CD technology. Sound boards brought music, sound effects and even speech to the MS-DOS universe. The 16-bit systems introduced videogamers to stereo sound and CD promises to bring state-of-the-art audio to the video and computer game environment."
Bill Kunkel and Joyce Worle, Electronic Games, Volume 1 Issue 1, September 1992
"Ultimately, how good the games are is what will decide which platforms attract a viable audience, and which are back-of-theshelf curiosities. That's why Nintendo's decision to stay with the cartridge for the Ultra 64 shook the industry. The virtues of CD are well-known: beautiful graphics, full stereo sound, and tons of memory. Throw in FMV and a manufacturing cost less than 5% of most cartridges."
Arnie Katz, Electronic Games, Volume 2 Issue 12, September 1994
Background
This project started with this one very mundane thought I had: Wow. The disc must be history's most boring format. It's flat, it's brittle and it has no satisfying weight to it. Collector's value of these things are only ever about what is stored on them, and this storage solution is so unreliable that the gamer snobs are never going to put the most valuable copies back into the player in which it belongs.
This thought later developed into something else. Is there a single person in this universe that values the CD beyond its storage capabilities? Why am I not one of those people? If they exist, where are they? As such, in June of 2025 I started drafting on the following:
Works cited: Shahani, C. J., Manns, B., & Youket, M. (2003). Longevity of CD media: research at the library of congress. Preservation Research and Testing Division, Washington, DC.
My concern about the CD-ROM faced a rather lukwarm reception at the time. My paper was successful in the way that it stuck to the curriculum, but I never really nailed down why this was actually important as a project, or why it would be worth pursuing further. Yet I couldn't get this stupid problem out of my head. Why is this important? No, rather, why is the CD-ROM not important?? I exited my first study with the following takeaways:
Little research has been done on the actual longevity of the CD-ROM.
The CD is making a comeback in the music industry, but the game industry remains untouched as a point of interest and an industry of reprints does not exist.
Almost every study on the CD-ROM is only a study about something adjacent that does not specifically niche itself on the disc.
Video Games
Being born at the very end of the 90's meant that the CD-ROM was my primary mode of video gaming. I grew up playing games on the PC, Wii and Xbox 360, and I grew up loving video games. I never just loved games for the journey that was stored on the disc, it was my interest in hardware that ulimately guided me toward game development in my teens. My game developer dreams were not realized, but I have found myself a place where I can do the next best thing: introducing academia to video games as a serious topic of study from both a cultural and material perspective.
When immersed in my humanities disciplines I realized something else about video games. This technology had surrounded me my entire life, yet it was a technology that was yet to be widely accepted in formal research. In the humanities we read books, we watch movies, we even make media analyses on social media phenomenon. When video games appear, we speak about the wonders of interactivity for a week and then spend the rest of the year on the books again. My professors like to tell me that plenty of research is being done on the topic, but I am not satisfied with this niche where we simply sing the praises of the narratorial capabilities afforded by play. I believe that video games can't be considered an accepted mode of research until they have an equal space as film in the curriculum. We do not just make space for film as mere entertainment, it is also not unusual to watch film adjacent to a lesson in a historical period, analysis of its cinematography, all the while highlighting the importance of its cultural impact.
I'm still being asked why this thesis is going to be about video games on CD, when the music and film industry is arguably the more appropriate entryway into the topic. Indeed, it was in music that the medium was born, and it was in film that the CD-ROM truly found its footing.
When games became discs
When did video games become known as a disc-based artefact? This is where things get interesting, because this story is the part that I would like to argue is much more curious than music or film. We used to know video games in the 2000's as a disc-based interaction with a large number of consoles, but we all know this as a thing of history. We are back to cartridge with the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 systems, and the rest of the industry are headed in the digital direction. CD peripherals are now a costly addition to most systems, and buying physical games are already more expensive than digital downloads. Disc readers for PC is now merely a hobbyists addition. Yet at the same time, the regular old CD-ROM of less famous titles are still easily found in the second hand bargain bins. The avarage gamer knows that this journey started on the arcade before the cartridge; but what was up with the fact that Nintendo was releasing CD-ROM games on the PC in 1994, 2-3 full years before choosing cartridge as their storage solution for the Nintendo 64? (See Educational Mario Games)
Digital Humanities
After having noted some interest in what it is that defines the Digital Humanities (DH) field, I will use this section to outline the aim and research method of the project, as well as how it all fits within the scope of DH.
