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PC Gaming @lemmy.ca
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Do you still play any PC games on a physical disc? Or, when did you last do that?

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?

64 comments

  • 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?

  • I buy and play a bunch of old games from an EBay seller who sends both the original disc and a disc with a copy of the game that loads dosbox stuff or whatever else to make it work easily on a modern system without fiddling around. It's pretty great.

    I have a bunch of strategy and sim games.

  • 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 still have some floppies in working order, even.

    But no, I don't play them regularly. It's just easier to make a backup that doesn't need a disk in the drive. Even most of my retro PCs these days run out of a large-ish hard drive replacement, so keeping games outside their unreliable original media and the original media elsewhere is a better alternative.

    It's a bit different on consoles where carts are harder to duplicate and ingest, as well as being more reliable and loading faster. Floppies and optical media, particularly when you can access the files, less so.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I think the last disc-based game I played was Neverwinter Nights 2. Either that or the Command and Conquer Collection. That was probably around 2014.

    • Nice. I was recently browsing this used bookstore near me, and C&C: Generals was sitting on the shelf in the music CD section, so I bought it. That was what got me thinking about my existing physical game collection.

  • I dusted off my old xbox 360 a month ago and played a few games on it. Aside from that, not for quite a few years now.

  • The last game that I remember that needed a disc to play was Battlefield 1942 and I made a virtual drive with an ISO so I didn't need to put the stupid disc in every time and listen to it spin up. Current PC doesn't have a drive at all.

    While I think a lot of the old box art was neat and all, I don't miss the physical requirements that took up space and all the manual updates and whatnot. Absolutely love steam's digital store and if that ever shits the bed and there isn't an alternate I will just stop PC gaming because the effort to manage all that stuff isn't worth it any more. Music and movies are the same, the physical media was nice for its time but I don't need to interact with it to use it anymore.

  • The last time I played a PC game on a physical disc? Can I cheat a little bit here? I found a self burned CD from old early 2008 or earlier days. There were a few RPG Maker 2000 games on it, which I downloaded from internet cafes, such as Vampires Dawn (back then, when only a German version was available for the first game in series). And I played a few of them last year with an open source RPG Maker player called EasyRPG, but with RetroArch.

    So yes, I played PC games in 2024 from a physical disc. But I leave it to you, if you count that. :D

  • 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?

  • 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

64 comments