Slower to load compared to cartridges, yes. But that doesn't mean they cannot be used in place of cartridges. The fact that Lost Eden and the Sega CD exists is proof that systems could handle CD-based games just fine. And as I've said elsewhere, we were loading games off cassette and floppy disk in the 80s so writing games that had to support slower access times wasn't exactly a new concept.

The reason the Sega CD tanked was because you had to buy two games consoles (the Mega Drive + Sega CD) just to use it. The fact that Sega CD games had no copy protection probably didn't help much either (the Famicom Disk System suffered a similar problem there too).

> Slower to load compared to cartridges

Access time. You loaded from the cassette, but once loaded you didn't need it. CD-ROM games (like LE) needs to access the disk for everything and with an already minuscule RAM you can't cache anything.

I played LE on the PC (and with 2x drive and SMARTDRV) and I don't remember such big lags, though it was 25 years ago so of course my memory could deceive me.

Of course if you can find some balance not using the CD all the time then of course it could greatly enchance the experience.

Syummary: yeah, they could be used, but access time was another small, but a nail in the coffin, at least IMO.

> Access time. You loaded from the cassette, but once loaded you didn't need it. CD-ROM games (like LE) needs to access the disk for everything and with an already minuscule RAM you can't cache anything.

I was specifically on about load times. As already discussed several times in this thread, most CD-ROM games systems had onboard RAM to solve the access time problem (Sega CD especially so).

Sure there might be some outliers of bad CD systems, but there’s also bad cartridge systems too (like Amstrads attempt at rebranding the CPC 646 architecture as a games console). You simply cannot compare the worst CD systems against the best cartridge systems if you want a sensible discussion.

> I played LE on the PC (and with 2x drive and SMARTDRV) and I don't remember such big lags, though it was 25 years ago so of course my memory could deceive me.

I’ve not played LE so cannot comment on that game specifically but there are such things as bad console ports of good PC games even on consoles that are technically capable of playing the game well. I own a few examples of this myself. It’s far better not to compare one game and make a conclusion based off that in isolation.

> Syummary: yeah, they could be used, but access time was another small, but a nail in the coffin, at least IMO.

Again, the Sega CD had a large on board RAM. I have a Sega CD (well, the Mega CD because it’s PAL) and games play fine on it.

I wish HN wouldn’t perpetuate this complete fallacy that console CD addons were as limited as their host systems. It’s completely false. I even have the hardware to prove it.

It's not what they were so limited, but more what to fully utilize them you need a vast experience and an ability to seriously think out of the box.

Given the tight schedules and and overall pace of the things back then it is understandable why it didn't flew the way it could be.

Totally unrelated but somewhat relateable anecdata: a couple of weeks ago I decided what I needed some more notification sounds for my two phones and bazillion apps which trigger notifications. Being (mentally) a greybeard I decided to use some sounds from Duke3D. After extracting VOCs from DUKE3D.GRP I came to realisation what if you exclude monsters sound variants (roam, attack, death etc) - there is overall a pretty pale palette of sounds. Yet, back then (and even now - it is only a couple of years since I did kick those alien asses) it were perceived as a wonderful, submerging experience. Duke3D shipped on the CD, with only 35Mb of data used.

> It's not what they were so limited, but more what to fully utilize them you need a vast experience and an ability to seriously think out of the box.

That's not true at all. I've said multiple times already that systems with slower access times on storage media was the _norm_ and cartridge based systems were the exception. I've cited multiple examples of how that was the case as well. I don't understand why you're still containing on with this myth of yours even when presented with evidence that clearly disproves it.

> Given the tight schedules and and overall pace of the things back then it is understandable why it didn't flew the way it could be.

Neither of that had any baring on why the Sega CD flopped. Most of the games on the Sega CD were quality games. The issue was mostly down to cost. You had to literally buy two consoles to use it. And games were only marginally better on the Sega CD (plus quite a few Sega CD games were also released as cartridge games for the Mega Drive) so few people saw the Sega CD as a worthwhile purchase. Hence why Sega CD's rise in popularity was afterwards with retro collectors.

You keep saying that games on the Sega CD were crap and that simply isn't true. I have a shelf full of Sega CD games that are to a very good standard. Sure there were some naff titles and those were typically FMV games, but that doesn't mean that every game for the Sega CD was FMV, nor that other non CD-based systems didn't also have their fair share of duds. You're intentionally comparing the worst of CD with the best of cartridges and not even realising how skewed an analysis that is -- then retroactively applying some made up technical facts to fit the analysis. Thus your entire reasoning here is completely backwards.

> Totally unrelated but somewhat relateable anecdata: a couple of weeks ago I decided what I needed some more notification sounds for my two phones and bazillion apps which trigger notifications. Being (mentally) a greybeard I decided to use some sounds from Duke3D. After extracting VOCs from DUKE3D.GRP I came to realisation what if you exclude monsters sound variants (roam, attack, death etc) - there is overall a pretty pale palette of sounds. Yet, back then (and even now - it is only a couple of years since I did kick those alien asses) it were perceived as a wonderful, submerging experience. Duke3D shipped on the CD, with only 35Mb of data used.

Yeah that is totally unrelated. :) Asset sizes naturally get exponentially larger as the quality increases. Audio would be dropped to ridiculously low bit rates and in mono. Textures would be low resolution. etc. I remember some of the tricks I had to pull to crunch sound effects for Worms down to < 1MB for the entire sound pack. If you played them through a HiFi set up they sounded dreadful but over your average PC speakers* and blended into the background ambient sound effects streamed from CD audio, and you had something that sounded pretty ok. But individually those SFX were dreadful. The same is true for Duke3D and every other game of the 90s. The N64 had to pull similar tricks to fit all the audio data onto one cartridge too and didn't even have the luxury of CD audio.

Another thing to remember is our expectations were lower back then. I remember being blown away at Sonic 3 thinking those graphics looked incredible. I also remember playing Wolf3D for the first time and being shocked at a PC could generate real time 3D graphics that played that smoothly. And back when a lot of people were still stuck with MIDI and PC Speakers, hugely bit crunched sound effects sounded amazing compared to what came before it. Heck, I remember hearing spoken text via PCM audio on a 64k BASIC micro and being shocked that was even possible and that spoken text consisted of 2 works that were almost impossible to make out if it had not been for the fact it was the same two words as the games title.

* as in those little desktop speakers that were the norm -- not to be confused with the PC Speaker sound device that most IBM-compatibles shipped with at one time

But anyway, back to the point: the access times for CD were not the downfall of the Sega CD. It was the fact that you needed a Mega Drive to run it and half the library was re-issues of Mega Drive games anyway. So it effectively became a novelty for rich kids rather than a mass consumer addon.