CD-ROM games

[Corrupted Unicorn]

I decided to call them "CD-ROM" games as to distinguish them further from PC games in general, since so many of them can be purchased digitally now. But that's not what I want to talk about here! I want to discuss those games that came in, well, CD-ROMs during the 90's and 00's.

I love them. They're one of my biggest interests. They were my main source of digital game entertainment when I had no consoles nor Internet  Nowadays I like to pick them up from stores that still carry them (second-hand...). I wish my PC tower had a CD-ROM reader still!  My bf got me an external one that connects via USB, but it struggles to work most of the time...  It's a shame, sometimes I find games that are not uploaded on the Internet and are abandonware, and I'd love to preserve them 

There's many kinds of CD-ROM games, but I could round my favourites in three big categories:

- Edutainment games: Your Jumpstarts, your Humongous Entertainments, your Zoombinis... I had none of those back in my country (as far as I know  ) but there were lesser known series here that I grew up with. I'm still fond of these games: simple, but sweet in their noble quest of making learning fun for children. I still need to try the aforementioned "American" games, and I'm currently interested in recovering the local ones.
- Tycoon games: I only had Zoo Tycoon and a Zoo Tycoon-like called Wildlife Park  But I also like the idea of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Mall Tycoon... maybe the Movies also goes into this category. To be fair, I'm less into the actual economic management aspect of the game... I just want to make a cool zoo/theme park/mall and fill it with things I like My recent favourite is called Afterlife, where you manage a version of Heaven/Hell!
- Board game adaptations: PC versions of Monopoly, Sorry, the Game of Life... this is recent category I like, but I love it!! My personal favourite is Game of Life (another board game that never got here until very recently). I guess I'm just very fond of life recreation games with early CGI graphics whose goals is making a family and a lot of money. It's kind of an ugly caricaturesque CGI game, but it lets you navigate through the board in first person and it has silly newspaper strip-like captions (or CGI cutscenes) to accompany each and every square on the board. It also has a lovely announcer (...IT'S PAYDAY BABY!!!!)
- Also, probably they deserve their whole category as well, but I also love the PC Barbie games 

Are you nostalgic like me? Just finding out new things? Share them here!

[MediocreMetastasis]

I did have CD-ROMs when I was growing up, but they weren't significant enough in my life for me to consider them nostalgic. That doesn't mean I don't love them though. The fact that cd-roms games were very cheap to produce and that you didn't need to follow publisher guidelines as, you know, nobody owns the technology that was personal computers. Anybody could make a cd-rom game. You could practically be a indie developer. This lead to some weird games. Such as:

• Bad Day on the Midway
• Helios
• Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou
• The Harvester

All these games exist because of how cheap it was to make cd-rom games. So cheap that publishers publish dear god anything with zero consequence.

[Dan Q]

I used to love the level of imagination that used to go into packaging computer games before everything became "yet another DVD case"

Often games would come in big boxes if they had big manuals... or feelies! When I got my first copy of Civilization, the box contained a beautiful 140-page manual, plus four 3.5" floppy disks, plus four 5.25" floppy disks for folks who (like me) were still using 5.25" disk drives. And you didn't need to install it: you could install it, if you wanted: or you could run it from the disk (if you didn't mind the disk-swapping dance when you'd jump between the intro, the main game, the diplomacy and throne room, and the built-in help).

But a few game boxes really stood out. The Incredible Machine originally came in a box that was an actual Rube Goldberg machine! You'd pull a mouse's tail that would make it spring-back up the side of the box and, through some excellent cardboard and string work, would eventually fold-open with the floppy disk lifted-out on the end of a hand. It was amazing! Even though I was super-excited to play the game I insisted on first re-assembling the box so I could watch it do its magic again!

And Day of the Tentacle! The original (floppy, not CD-ROM re-release) version came in a huge green Toblerone-shaped box, which was a really clever marketing move because it meant that game stores had to put it on top of everything else... because you can't stack things on a triangular prism!

[Tuffy!]

I used to love the level of imagination that used to go into packaging computer games before everything became "yet another DVD case"

Oh mate, I can feel you. I miss those big boxes so much. The effort that was put into some of those... Cleverly designed, printed maps and manuals. Sometimes they included very nice gimmicks for your keychain, figures and stuff. I really miss those times.

Still have some of that old games lying around. I think I have something like 20 to 30 of those CD-ROM games left. Most of them are only stored in jewel cases. But I still have about 10 of those good old vintage retail boxes left. At some point in my life I must have thrown away most of them. Makes me kind of sad. And I lost a good chunk of money by doing so as well. Some of my old games would have been worth up to 200 bucks with the retail packaging intact 

I really liked:

Lost Vikings I + II (still a good play today) and Stonekeep  . Aww there are so many memories. I could go on and list dozens of games that come to my memory right now    Good times 

[fairyrune]

oh my gosh!! CD-ROMs were my first ever foray into gaming as a kid. i played some bigger names i still see flying around, but some other stuff too. here are some i own from my childhood:

• stronghold: i think this got me into management/sim games. i was obsessed with it; it has a really chunky manual, and i loved the graphics. you build a castle in this one!
• simpark: this game was also a favourite of mine, except when... i think aliens landed, and it scared me really bad! funny what a kid can be scared by, it wasn't that intense this one, you manage a wildlife park!
• theme park world: aka, sim theme park in other places. this one is a classic! it's about running your own theme park. there's some really silly facilities in this one.

i have a couple more, but i'll have to dig them out. i never had a home console growing up until the wii; my early years were ds games, flash, and CD-ROMs. they have a really special place in my heart!

[Tuffy!]

I remember those 3 games as well. Theme Park really is a classic. I haven't played Stronghold (as far as I remember) but I have a  Big Box version in mint condition laying right next to me. Not sure where it's from. I can't remember playing it before but it's really tempting. Maybe I should give it a try and install this game on my old machine right now 

@Dan Q, is this your DotT box?

[MrsMoe]

GGGRAAAAAHHH!!! I LOVE CD-ROM GAMES!!!! 

Not just because I grew up on them (although that's a large part of it), but because I still enjoy digging them up on abandonware sites and playing them to this day. It seems like that entire era was an entire gold mine for strange, experimental, and fever dreamish games made by small indie dev teams full of weirdos. There's a distinct energy and dreaminess to it all that you can't quite get anywhere else, even within the modern indie scene.

I grew up mainly with old edutainment games (Reader Rabbit, Jumpstart (mainly the 3D games), etc), but I was also a huge fan of the Humongous Entertainment games. Pajama Sam in particular was my favorite!

As an adult, I'm really into the super weird and surreal games. A few of my favorites have been The Neverhood, The Residents duology (Freakshow and Bad Day on the Midway), Alice: An Interactive Museum, The Dark Eye and Phantasmagoria. There's a few other games that I haven't played yet but I've seen quite a bit of them through videos, like The 7th Guest or 9: The Last Resort. I enjoyed what I played of Dark Seed 2 and Sanitarium, but I ran into technically issues that kept me from progressing 

[Dan Q]

@Dan Q, is this your DotT box?

Sadly, no. I didn't get the floppy version of DotT; I waited for the "talkie" version on CD-ROM, which came in a more-boring "board game"-style cardboard box.

[Tuffy!]

Oh well, the box you got still is nice to have 

I really love those old point and click adventure games   

[fairyrune]

hi, i'm back! i thought i'd take a moment to share what i could find of our collection. a lot of it is sims 2 expansion packs, but there's a few i didn't mention in my previous post that i'd forgotten about!

i'd love to play some of these again. sadly, it'd require a bit of emulation... i'm confident i can get it working, it's just fiddly.

[Zero Kirby]

I've still got a handful of CD-ROM games lying around, and among my favourites...

Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion is an absolutely fantastic adaptation of the board game. It has an absolutely pitch-perfect noir mystery aesthetic, with dark, moody visuals and a slow, jazzy soundtrack that just oozes atmosphere. I've actually got the soundtrack on my phone so I can listen to it on its own, it's that good. Plus, it was a great way for me to play Clue as a kid, since I didn't have a lot of friends around to play it with. The pre-rendered scenes they made for every suggestion - where you see the killer commit the crime from the POV of the victim - were both cool and scary when I was young.

The Movies was another one of my favourites. A tycoon game where you're an up-and-coming studio owner, starting all the way back in the roaring twenties and fighting your way to the top of the charts by hiring stars, researching technology, and all that jazz. It's also got a little bit of The Sims in it since you have to manage your Stars' happiness and keep them out of trouble, and you can even make your own and import them into the game. Plus, since it's all about movies, it's got some machinima tools built in and you can eventually write your own scripts, or modify ones written for you. I actually just spent a day trying to get it to run on Linux Cinnamon Mint and haven't been successful as of yet - hopefully, one day...

Dunno if this really counts since it's on Steam now, but I do still have my CD copy of Rise of Nations as well. A friend introduced me to this game through a LAN game we had at his place. It's a 4X RTS all about advancing your nation from the stone age to the information age and trying to conquer the world, either through military, influence, economics... you can pick from a variety of different goals. Combat has a simple rock-paper-scissors setup and resource gathering is simplified, which lets you focus a bit more on building and strategizing. It's a lot of fun.