Cartridges VS Disc's

[Angantyr]

What in your opinion did you like better? The old Carts which you could plug in or the discs you could slide in?

Personally I wish they never changed it over to discs, sure its more cheaper but the quality suffers. They never scratched, they weren't easily broken and they looked and handles better. Sure they were slightly more expensive to make and had their faults but surely they could have worked on them. Bring back carts I say!

[Crazy Chocobo]

Cartridges were always a great idea because they didn't get damaged as easily as discs do now. Discs are very sensitive and even accidentally rubbing it against something can cause scratches. Once a disc gets a few scratches on it, it may not work as well. They're a lot of effort to look after, you have to clean them and everything.

Yes, discs get damaged way too easily. I remember playing my brother's Tekken Tag Tournament in my PS2 and I accidentally jammed it up in there. Once I got it out, the game was scratched and doesn't work any more. It's stupid! Cartridges were easy to look after as long as you didn't drop them on the floor or something. I still have old cartridges from my Atari and Sega Mega Drive and most of them still work. I love them! They were an excellent idea, I wish they never changed to discs. I suppose discs have their advantages though.

[Rikkuffx]

Cartridges are deffinately better. I was so mad when my ff8 disc got scratched and I had to order a new one,just because of one disc. I even cleaned the disc with my disc cleaner and it didn't help. Discs are so sensitive they get scratched easily,one little scratch and it can really mess up your disc.

[azrafel]

I miss having the old cartridges around.....

I may have to go out and get myself an old SNES

[Georg Prime]

cartridges all the way!

I still have my NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 plus all my old games and everything works perfectly (well besides the occasinal cartridge blow of course). Nothing better than popping in some Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, or Secret of Mana, and taking a trip down memory lane!

@azrafel - they actually released a new streamlined version of the SNES awhile ago..i think around the nintendo 64 was released. I was thinking about trying to find one because my controller buttons are getting mashed in, plus the new version has an easier way to eject cartridges i believe.

[Kaiser Dragoon]

Yeah, the streamlined SNES, my friend got one of those, it was just smaller really, there wasnt too much special about it, just smaller *sigh*
Anyways, Carts have one major advantage over Discs, and you can try this for yourself, take any disc, no matter how old or new, and pop it into your console, what happens? Loading... Loading... Loading... it's the same for every disc that I've ever seen, a Loading screen somewhere, on the other hand, Carts didn't seem to have a real loading screen, on pretty much any that I've ever seen, or it wasn't made real apparent.

[Shiendar]

I remember the only CD game I ever saw that had only one load time the whole time you're playing: Soul Reaver... there are ways to hide or avoid load times, but there are a lot of disadvantages to carts.

Now for nostalgia-sake, I would want someone to bring HuCards back. Or use those new 'jump-drives' for games. That's a bit like carts and HuCards and they hold gigs of information.

Lovely.

[Jesus Christ]

I didn't mind cartridges that much, but discs are superior in my opinion. I don't have to keep blowing on the old ones and I don't have to worry about my game saves being lost because they were too old. The internal memory began to fail on a lot of my old SNES games.

The freakin’ discs, man, those things get scratched up no matter how you try and take care of them.

I disagree. It really isn't that difficult to take care of them. Just make sure they are either in your console or in the case at all times, handle them by the edges and be careful when putting them back in the case. I've noticed a lot of people don't take care of discs nearly as much as they should, and I don't understand why. I have never had a game disc cease normal function because of damage, and I've handled them hundreds of times. It's just about being careful.

Also, discs can, on average, hold much more information than a cartridge. This is actually the reason why FFVII was not released on the N64.

Cartridges are nostalgic, sure, but when it comes to actual use they are inferior to discs, which is why you don't see them anymore other than on a few handheld systems.

[Kaiser Dragoon]

They aren't so much inferior, it is just that it costs more to produce carts than Discs, and carts can't be swapped, which I may point out is the real reason VII wasn't put on 64, a 64 cart can have damn near a gig of info on it, but, disc swapping made it possible to have more than that. So, the two main reasons carts were replaced by the CD= Cheaper, and can be swapped. While carts definitely had their advantages, like longer life, and little to no loading screens, they were eventually wiped out because of the CD's versatility, not because of size.

[maxpower]

This is a real great question. My old-school loving heart says cartridges were awsome. But my money grubbing heart has got to go with discs.

I mean the cartridge was great because companies could always upgrade not only the console but the cartridge. New chips made ideas like Star Fox and bigger and better games available without updating the console technology. Also no loading time made cartridges real nice.

Still Discs are far cheaper to create. Also you can switch out discs in mid game. Further more with new technology such as Blu-ray disc stprage capacity is getting huge! You will be able to fit tons of information on a single disc. I also think dscs are cool because they are easier to store and fit well with the reat of the movies, computer programs, etc. that I have. And you can buy tons of old school collections on a single CD. It's awsome (I got the sega genesis collection yesterday.)

So my final vote would be Disc and old school games.

[Sevion]

Disks are better for graphics and more easy to clean, but I liked cartridges better because they would almost never stop working and they were simple. Even though they were pretty hard to clean out if it was really dirty, unless you spilled something in it or got it wet, they are teh best!

[Angantyr]

Anybody remember Sonic & Knuckles? See any discs that can do that? Thats another great thing they didn't take advantage of, CDs you can only write onto once but with a cartridge that can add say a memory chip if it isn't sufficient enough and you can also load your save data onto it. The potential is far beyond what a blu-ray disc can do if you think about it.