CD-ROMantics (October 3, 2008)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Ars Technica has published a look back at Myst in the context of having created the CD-ROM gaming market. It begins by acknowledging Wing Commander:
On September 24, 1993, Broderbund Software released the game Myst, and in the process, substantially contributed to kick-starting the nascent CD-ROM software industry. Myst, to be fair, was only one of several excellent games that shipped around this time and made good use of that new-fangled CD-whatsis thingy—The Seventh Guest, Wing Commander III, and Alone in the Dark were all popular titles that sold well. But Myst shattered sales records and set marks that stood until The Sims came along in 2002.
Click to expand...
Wing Commander III was a big deal, but Myst does deserve this crown - while Heart of the Tiger sold a record number of copies, it shipped over a year later. It is also worth noting that the very first computers to include CD-ROM drives standard, the Japanese FM Towns systems, had upgraded disc versions of Wing Commander and Ultima titles available as early as 1991!


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Original update published on October 3, 2008
 
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I am not sure if Alone in the Dark belongs in that list.
Although it was an excellent game and the forefather of the survival horror games (way before Resident evil), it is not known for propelling the CD-Rom genre.
In contrary to the other mentioned games it had in fact a floppy disc version which was far more common at the time of release.
 
Yes indeed, I purchased my first CD-rom player in 1992(single speed), that was suitable for my soundcard(yes, there were no IDE drives back then), and I never seen alone in the dark cd-versions.

CD-titels we did see most on the shelves included Maddog Mcree, 7th guest, Myst, Rebel assault, and king's Quest 5 and 6 the talkee versions. These games were all OEM versions that came bundled with CD-rom starter kits, that they disassembled and sold seperatly. They came fairly cheap, so we bought those over the full boxed versions anyway, I think most people had these games back then. My fullspeecht copy of privateer also came in in that wayll. I had expected Wing commander 1 and ultima XI to be talkie versions on cd-rom too, like the SEGA version, but boy was I disappointed... :( My all-time personal fav game to play was "The Horde", which featured nice cinematics and excellent gameplay, and an audioCD track that was simply fantastic :D

When wing commander three came out, it, and "under a killing moon", where the most impressive games to look at(cinematic-wise), and it was over a year on display around stores, the game stood out, and for that reason sold very well to the general public, those early games are on the list because not they were the best, but they where all that was available on that format.
 
You know one of my first games was WC2 special edition (or whatever it was called) on a double cd thing. I couldnt get the sound to work but tried to play it anyway, I couldnt get passed the mission because I didnt understand how to play it. I kept flying to the base station and shooting it. I took it back a few days later. ~~~

Ed
 
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