Re: Speaking of old games...

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 22:08:25 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 10:42:28 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>

My games on CD-ROM are far more numerous. I can't remember which was
the first game I purchased on CD-ROM, but "Kings Quest V" was probably
one of the first.

>

This one is easy for me to remember. It was The 7th Guest. But King's
Quest V is up there for me as well.

>
Those aren't action games. /s

Oho, it's like that, is it? ;-)

The thing is, until the mid 90s, most action games were small enough
not to NEED CD-ROMs. "Doom" shipped on three (?) floppy disks and,
installed, needed maybe 10MB disk-space. The games that benefitted the
most were adventure games, since they had the most expansive and
detailed worlds (not to mention the most talkative characters). So
most CD-ROM games were for that genre first.

Still... first /action/ game for PC that came on CD-ROM?

Hmmm... I have a CD-ROM for "D/Generation" has a 1991 copyright on
it... but I'm not sure if that's the copyright of the game (which was
also released on floppy) or for the CD-ROM. I remember buying the game
on floppy, so I assume the CD-ROM version came much later.

"Rebel Assault" from 1993 is a more likely candidate. It was certainly
one of the earliest made-for-CD action games, as opposed to shovelware
dumped onto CD-ROM because the medium was cool. It was such a
disappointing game; pushed by LucasArts as a potential sequel to its
award-winning X-Wing, it turned out to be an extremely simplistic
rail-shooter. Worse, the technology of the time meant that - in order
to get a smooth framerate - the full-screen video was filled with
compression artifacts that made the game really hard to look at. We
forgave it, of course, because CD-ROM and FMV were the new hotness at
the time, but it really was quite a terrible game.