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Disks are lame! Why I love cartridges. (and whats yer fav?)


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CD's scratch too easy. I mean simply playing them they can scratch if laser is bad or dust gets in the way. Carts will always be superior in that way. I like nes but genesis boxed being plastic is super nice.

 

As far as storage capacity. I would think a nes size cart w/the memory from like a flash card could be put together to equal the capacity of a cd?

 

A blue ray ps3 does 50gb a 3ds cart (card) does up to 8gb I mean you could link way more than 50gb worth of 3ds sized games to equal the size of a cd? I think cart is still the way to go.

It only costs a lot more. Just look at the price of ssd hdd, and compare this to the price of a blu-ray disc. Sure you can have games on a cart with the same space or more then a single blu-ray can provide, but i think the price of a game will at least double if not tripple.

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It only costs a lot more. Just look at the price of ssd hdd, and compare this to the price of a blu-ray disc. Sure you can have games on a cart with the same space or more then a single blu-ray can provide, but i think the price of a game will at least double if not tripple.

 

I agree that today your statement would be true, however I seem to remember back in the day also being told that by going to CD Rom (or optical media) would bring the cost of a video game down considerably for the consumer. Which ironically was the exact same argument the music industry used for going to CD Rom over cassette tapes. Funny, I never saw a CD cost less than a cassette tape when they were both on the market at the same time. See that was the lie. The savings was never passed on to the consumer at least back then. It just meant the publisher made more money per each sale, however today the consumer would end up bearing the extra cost if they went to a cart like media.

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I agree that today your statement would be true, however I seem to remember back in the day also being told that by going to CD Rom (or optical media) would bring the cost of a video game down considerably for the consumer. Which ironically was the exact same argument the music industry used for going to CD Rom over cassette tapes. Funny, I never saw a CD cost less than a cassette tape when they were both on the market at the same time. See that was the lie. The savings was never passed on to the consumer at least back then. It just meant the publisher made more money per each sale, however today the consumer would end up bearing the extra cost if they went to a cart like media.

 

I suspect there was always a premium added to CD media because it was modern when compared to carts or cassettes in the case of music. But on the flip side the increased capacity of optical media vs. carts meant that bigger, more complex, more everything type games could be created. That extra development costs money = less perceived cost savings on the consumer end.

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I agree that today your statement would be true, however I seem to remember back in the day also being told that by going to CD Rom (or optical media) would bring the cost of a video game down considerably for the consumer. Which ironically was the exact same argument the music industry used for going to CD Rom over cassette tapes. Funny, I never saw a CD cost less than a cassette tape when they were both on the market at the same time. See that was the lie. The savings was never passed on to the consumer at least back then. It just meant the publisher made more money per each sale, however today the consumer would end up bearing the extra cost if they went to a cart like media.

Well it's the same with digital downloads they don't cost anything for the publisher, they alreay have servers running, and in most cases they cost MORE then a physical disc? Go figure that.

Reason a lot of digital downloads cost more is that a lot of companys run there european eervers in ireland. Because of tax a actual download costs more then a disc.

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Now with spooling and HDD's so you can stream the games and virtually eliminate load times, I'd say CD's are OK (I'd still be all over a console system if it used carts though.

 

My favorite carts though would have to be Gameboy. Yeah, they are just the right size, small enough to fit most anywhere you needed it, big enough expansions and such could be included in the cart without changing the outer dimensions (snes space invaders in the dmg cart for those with a super game boy)

 

They are stackable, have a large picture front label and are just convenient.

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It only costs a lot more. Just look at the price of ssd hdd, and compare this to the price of a blu-ray disc. Sure you can have games on a cart with the same space or more then a single blu-ray can provide, but i think the price of a game will at least double if not tripple.

 

No. Most games don't even come close to using the maximum capacity of those disc. On a large scale I doubt the cost to make the actual cards are that much more if any. They charge $50 for a brand new game regardless of media used. A new ps2 game back when cd was new was $50. Now a new ps3 game on blu-ray is well $50-$60 counting inflation pretty much the same price.

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High Voltage That picture of your carts collection makes me envious. It is

insane. All my carts, around 150 are in a big suitcase. I have two multicarts

for A2600 and A5200. But wow.

 

I honestly beleive, that with todays tech, the cartridge could make a comeback.

A developer could add secondary Chips and functionality into them, and they

could easily store 10 to 12 Gigs in them... But we will see, I predict at some

point, a major company is going to revert back to cartridges.

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But we will see, I predict at some

point, a major company is going to revert back to cartridges.

 

I predicted this a while back, especially with flash memory so cheap. I mean you can get a 16GB SD card for $16. A decent game wouldn't need even that much storage space and the lack of load times would be appealing to the players. Why hasn't it happened yet?

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I also love cartridges, you can decorate them any which way till you're blue and it will work fine. CD can only have art on one side and you can't hand decorate them, stickers will upset the balance and some markers can damage data layer. You can however decorate floppy disks as well but it's rarely done outside the standard itty-bitty 2x3" label area.

 

My favorite C64 game has not been made in cart form: Ultima 5.

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Well, what about a cartridge that allows the data downloaded only content to

be stored on it. I want real cartridges back though. DOWNLOADs, I predict

are going to be hacked and at some point be unprofittable. And keep in mind,

DOWNLOADABLE may be more profittable, but any hack can make a game.

Maybe the BIG GUYS will decide to lock out the junk and trash and

non-sales related washed-up scum out there to be relegated to the ['00'] scratch heaps.

Give em the Plastic shell, and the circuit board.. YAHH.

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Cool thread!

 

I still have vivid and fond memories of me just gazing at cartridge covers over and over as a little kid. There's just something about them. I've always been drawn to visual art, maybe that's why. I think the Jaguar carts are really cool, even though they do not stack well. The SNES carts are a little strange looking at them now but at the time I didn't think so.

 

As for CD's, I don't really prefer one over the other. It just reminds me of a time when things were changing. I remember thinking that CDs were so modern at the time.

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Well, it was because of lack of loading that I opted for an N64 instead of a PS1 back in the day. Short term, it meant that I had fewer games because cartridges were ridiculously expensive. Long term, though, I've never had a cartridge go bad on me, which is more than be said for all those old disc games that are scratched up and/or rotting from the inside. It's just a shame that they couldn't figure out a way to make cartridges cheaper...

 

Which ones are my favorite? NES cartridges make me very happy as well, as do Activision 2600 cartridges. They stack and don't jostle. Basically, any cartridge that has its name on the spine...

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  • 2 months later...

Cartridges are awesome if for no other reason than nostalgia for me. The games I grew up on were cartridges. The move to discs was exciting, but since I had already been through the 2600, 7800, NES, SNES, Genesis, and TG-16, the memories of disc-based games is... well... different. The cartridges held an aire of mystique. They were like magic. When I started gaming, I had no idea how they worked. By the time gaming got to discs, I understood the technology better and now, they're just games.

 

While even the carts are 'just games', there are still some that make me feel good just looking at them, using them, even simply hearing them rub against each other. The old 2600 carts really were almost magic to me. I would try to open the door to look inside and stare at the little game catalogs that Atari had. I don't remember the other Atari systems that well as they were really my step-brother's and I wasn't over there much. NES carts will always hold a special place because so much of my childhood was spent with them. The strange shaped Tengen carts (or other oddly shaped ones like the various Bible adventures ones) were oddities and made me want to rent and use them, almost just to see if they would fit in the ol' toaster. (Looking back, this may be why I preferred the Tengen Tetris over the Nintendo one.) After the NES came my TG-16 with its credit card sized games. Again, it was almost magical how they fit all those colors and graphics (more and better than the NES) on a tiny card that was so much smaller than the NES carts. Their size also meant they fit into CD jewel case sized holders that would fit on the shelf with other CDs. And when the CD attachment came out, those games also fit in the same sized cases. It just seemed so well planned out and cohesive from a design standpoint. From there, the SNES and Genesis carts started to just seem kind of ho hum. The SNES carts were kind of boring to me (although many of the games were amazing). And some of the Genesis carts were downright ugly (mainly sports titles with that yellow tab thing on the side). So they never really did much for me. (Although I did think the 'eject' button on the SNES was pretty cool.) And I didn't think the N64 carts looked impressive at all. Really kind of plain. A rounded top and a couple lines. Meh.

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I am very fond of cartridge games. Not because I hate load screens..

 

Well, it was because of lack of loading that I opted for an N64 instead of a PS1 back in the day..

 

It should be noted that many cartridge-based systems had game load times. They just tended to try to camouflage them. Nothing like "Loading", or "Please Wait" was seen on cartridges, but many SNES, Genesis, and even N64 games still had load screens where the player was forced to wait before he/she could play. See NBA Jam in the 16-bit days if you question this.

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It should be noted that many cartridge-based systems had game load times. They just tended to try to camouflage them. Nothing like "Loading", or "Please Wait" was seen on cartridges, but many SNES, Genesis, and even N64 games still had load screens where the player was forced to wait before he/she could play. See NBA Jam in the 16-bit days if you question this.

 

Anyone who has a Vita should be familiar with this. Playing Wipeout 2048 takes me back to the days of the Neo Geo CD and SEGA CD....

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