I remember the first time I played a game on a video console without using a cartridge. It was September 17, 1995. The Simpsons was airing part two of its cliffhanger episode, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”, and I had invited a friend over to watch it. He brought a PlayStation with him, which had been released only a week earlier on September 9th.
Its games were not on cartridges but on CD-ROMs, which enabled 3D graphics thanks to their superior storage capacity. We played a few rounds of Battle Arena Toshinden before the Simpsons episode, and I was impressed. 3D games and CD-ROMs were clearly the future of console gaming, and the future was bright.
The CD-ROM Revolution
The Nintendo 64 also had 3D graphics, but this was 1995. There was no N64 in the US until September 1996, so the CD-ROM’s moment as the exclusive future of console gaming had time to sink in with the 1995 releases of the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. At the time, this really was exciting and new. CDs let games get longer and pack in more intricate graphics and audio assets. “Bring on CD-ROM gaming!” I thought, “Nintendo, get with the times!”
The Return to Cartridges
Fast forward three decades or so, and I can still play games on discs, but much of console gaming has moved to downloadable or even streaming formats, and the average disc-based game requires a bulky download before I can play it. Nintendo has returned to cartridges in the Switch era (though also enabling downloadable games).
At this point, I’m all for the cartridges, both new and old. Open letter to Nintendo: turns out you know what you’re doing when it comes to console gaming. While updates are a thing on cartridge-based games, when you grab a Switch cartridge (or SNES, or NES), you know the game will be playable when you put it in your console.
The Frustrations of Modern Gaming
With the gaming media of the future, all bets are off. Just this morning, my brother called me because he was trying to play Exit 8 on our shared Steam account, and it insisted that I input a four-digit code it had sent him into Steam on my PC, and that he remote stream the game from my PC rather than running it on his laptop.
He tried, but the frame rate was incredibly slow, so it was unplayable. He was trying to fit in a half-hour of gaming, but it wasn’t worth the trouble to troubleshoot the problem, so he gave up and did something else.
Always Online, Always a Gamble
The problems are not just with shared accounts. If I want to play The Crew: Motorfest on my PlayStation, I am at the mercy of the server connections, even though I’m only interested in single-player. If the server’s down, I can’t play single player on the game I bought. If I want to play a major game at launch on Xbox, PlayStation, or PC, I know I’ll be rolling the dice on whether they bothered to finish the game before releasing it (I’m looking at you, Ubisoft, EA, 2K, Bethesda, and CD Projekt Red).
Trust and Quality: The Nintendo Difference
I may be in a minority here, but I love developers who regularly delay their release dates in the name of quality control, like Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Larian, and Nintendo. When I get their games, they’re finished. For PC, PlayStation, and Xbox gaming, you have to learn which games you can trust at launch, company by company, and few people can really keep up with that.
Nintendo has always curated its console ecosystem more carefully, including minimizing the disruptions of the current era of day-one patches and always-online games. I’ve never had Nintendo Switch Online (I had to look it up to double-check the name just now), but when I let my PlayStation or Xbox subscriptions lapse, I can’t help but notice that some games basically go dark. With Nintendo games, I know I’ll just be able to play.
The Lasting Appeal of Cartridges
I’m glad Nintendo has kept alive the spirit of pre-connectivity gaming, when cartridges and even CD-ROMs had to be standalone because consoles weren’t online to get updates. I’m also glad I’ve kept (or re-purchased) my retro consoles. The classic systems are still kicking after all these years, and I know I can fire them up and play them on a moment’s notice for a quick half-hour of gaming, with no chance of being derailed by verification codes, updates, or connectivity issues. All I’ll need to do is blow on the cartridge a couple of times.
Brandon Perton started The Old School Game Vault, a mail-in service where you can buy and sell retro video games. He brings more than 15 years of experience in retro gaming, authentication, and the collector market.
