What's best: Cartridge, CD-ROM...or cassette??

[Matt_B]

Reeling in a cassette tape with a pencil, or even better, a BIC pen, is one of life's greatest small-pleasures - try doing that with a cartridge - so +1 to cassettes there I think.

Hang on a second. You're using one of the disadvantages of cassettes as a plus point? So, in the same light, does that mean that carts being more expensive is good or bad?

People have already made that point, and I don't disagree. Price something high and customers will add value to it; it works for Stella Artois - which is otherwise indistinguishable from the gnats censored it costs more than - and it works for cartridges. The vast majority of the most prized collectable video games come on cartridge, after all.

I do admit I quite liked the last few posts. I myself have fond memories of winding tape back into cassettes and trying to stick them back together. This was not always successful however. I remember Pyjamarama snuffed it at the hands (or rather, head) of my cassette player. Very upsetting.

Cartridges resolved all of this!

Except for that fact that you can't get Pyjamarama on a cartridge.

[thompson9980]

Except for that fact that you can't get Pyjamarama on a cartridge.

Very good. That IS a +1 for cassettes!

[paranoid marvin]

Taking everything into consideration, I would say cassette - for several reasons.

Back in the day, the 5 minutes spent waiting for a game to load had it's advantages. You had a chance to read the instructions properly or a couple of pages of the latest Crash! There was the anticipation as the loading screen(s) was drawn - if you had a breadbin you also got some pretty nifty music or if you were really lucky a mini-game to play or synth to mess around with. It was an art for coders to best fill those 5 minutes.

When the game HAD loaded you needed to stick with it, even if it may seem a bit rubbish at first; you'd waited 5 minutes for it to load, and would have to wait another 5 to play anything else. So you tended to give games more of a chance, and there was less of the 'flicking between games' that became more prevalent (esp with cartridges). They were cheap so you could own lots, and having mates who were into the same system was an advantage as you could copy each other's games. At the time MS games were selling for about £40-£50. So would I own (at best) 2 or 3 of those or 50 or so Speccy/C64 games? Remember back then there was no part-exing shops, so everything you bought cost the full price, and you were stuck with any turkeys you were unlucky enough to buy.

[paranoid marvin]

I can buy 5 pairs of knockoff trainers for the price of a proper pair of Adidas.

I can buy several mcdonalds for the price of a proper steak meal

My GF could have bought a couple of Dacia sanderos for the price of her Alfa romeo Mito

sometimes you just want to pay extra to get that bit better quality.

I think the argument is more would you rather pay £15,000 for a car you can have today, or £10,000 for the same car but you have to wait 3 months before you get it.

[sscott]

Cartridges for me, now and then. ROMs of course are even easier now but that's cheating.

[The Laird]

At the time MS games were selling for about £40-£50. So would I own (at best) 2 or 3 of those or 50 or so Speccy/C64 games? Remember back then there was no part-exing shops, so everything you bought cost the full price, and you were stuck with any turkeys you were unlucky enough to buy.

Which ones were those? Nearly all Master System games were priced at £19.99 or £24.99, Sega Cards were even cheaper.

Also there were loads of part-ex shops. Back in the day I had 2 branches of Software Plus, 2 branches of Games Galore and Software Cellar all within a few miles drive that offered to buy or exchange games.

[Matt_B]

Cartridges for me, now and then. ROMs of course are even easier now but that's cheating.

Ah, yes the pirated ROM; that finally put consoles on the level with other devices in that you could play all the games you could never afford back in the day.

More generally, I suppose downloads are the one option that's not on the list, and they are a retro format that pre-dates the 3.5" floppy and CDs. I've got fond memories of downloading shareware games on the university computer network; it'd take several hours to get them and that's assuming you didn't come back to a timeout error. It certainly made me appreciate them when I got them though.

[crusto]

At the time MS games were selling for about £40-£50. So would I own (at best) 2 or 3 of those or 50 or so Speccy/C64 games? Remember back then there was no part-exing shops, so everything you bought cost the full price, and you were stuck with any turkeys you were unlucky enough to buy.

Which ones were those? Nearly all Master System games were priced at £19.99 or £24.99, Sega Cards were even cheaper.

Also there were loads of part-ex shops. Back in the day I had 2 branches of Software Plus, 2 branches of Games Galore and Software Cellar all within a few miles drive that offered to buy or exchange games.

You beat me to it laird, the only game I can remember being more than that was Phantasy Star.

[RodimusPrime]

At the time MS games were selling for about £40-£50. So would I own (at best) 2 or 3 of those or 50 or so Speccy/C64 games? Remember back then there was no part-exing shops, so everything you bought cost the full price, and you were stuck with any turkeys you were unlucky enough to buy.

Which ones were those? Nearly all Master System games were priced at £19.99 or £24.99, Sega Cards were even cheaper.

Also there were loads of part-ex shops. Back in the day I had 2 branches of Software Plus, 2 branches of Games Galore and Software Cellar all within a few miles drive that offered to buy or exchange games.

You beat me to it laird, the only game I can remember being more than that was Phantasy Star.

TBH, I think this thread has been a little pointless. The OP even says in the very first post that carts are best but basically eliminated them from the conversation by saying no-one should be picking them because of cost. Setting out an agenda before the conversation has started.

Then all people can go on about is cost, and that anyones opinion who has picked cartridge is invalid because according to them anyone who has picked carts has only done so without truly thinking it through. apparently only the people picking cassettes and disks have really, really given it enough thought to have a valid opinion.

Then for some bizarre reason they are just plucking random cart prices out of thin air and vastly inflating prices from what I actually remember they were.

Then apparently all the downsides to carts are reasons to not have them, but the downsides to cassettes are now amazingly a reason to own them.

All this despite the vote overwhelmingly in favour of carts.

[paranoid marvin]

At the time MS games were selling for about £40-£50. So would I own (at best) 2 or 3 of those or 50 or so Speccy/C64 games? Remember back then there was no part-exing shops, so everything you bought cost the full price, and you were stuck with any turkeys you were unlucky enough to buy.

Which ones were those? Nearly all Master System games were priced at £19.99 or £24.99, Sega Cards were even cheaper.

Also there were loads of part-ex shops. Back in the day I had 2 branches of Software Plus, 2 branches of Games Galore and Software Cellar all within a few miles drive that offered to buy or exchange games.

You beat me to it laird, the only game I can remember being more than that was Phantasy Star.

sorry, I meant SNES/MD games. Tbh I thought that most Master System carts sold for £24.99 or £29.99 and cards were £19.99 ( I wouldn't know for sure as I only briefly glanced at that section back in the day) Back in the day with only £5 spending money per week, there was still a big difference between cart and cassette prices. And although there were plenty of retailers of new software ( WH Smiths, John Menzies and Boots) there were no second-user outlets untilk Cash Convertors came along.

[Spector]

TBH, I think this thread has been a little pointless. The OP even says in the very first post that carts are best but basically eliminated them from the conversation by saying no-one should be picking them because of cost. Setting out an agenda before the conversation has started.

Talk about twisting a person's words!

Last night on the IRC chatroom there was a heated argument about what the best format was for playing games, taking into account the context of playing them in that particular decade...
...Remember - I'm not asking which is technically the best- because obviously that's cartridges- but what is best in terms of from a practical and economic sense as well as desirability.

And as I suggested back then, cassettes to me were much better for the time. If the C64 and Spectrum had been cart only, the 80s would have been sh1t. Thank god £40 games didn't take away our ability to build huge collections of games until the 90s.
As for reliability, there was a device called The Eliminator on sale in 1990-91 for the NES, Master System and gameboy for cleaning cart sockets to stop various errors/crashes etc that would occur. If carts were super reliable, this device -expensively advertised on the back cover of The Complete Guide To Consoles IV- would not have been made.

You may continue the debate guys; I'll be on IRC after Germany-Scotland if you want to argue with me there!

[thompson9980]

TBH, I think this thread has been a little pointless.

On the contrary, it's highly entertaining.
You're irrational and irate outbursts keep me coming back.

[clarance]

Also, cartridges never had a (fantabulous) pop song written about them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_R0Kvk7G9U

Another point for cassettes methinks...

[Matt_B]

Also, cartridges never had a (fantabulous) pop song written about them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_R0Kvk7G9U

Another point for cassettes methinks...

You should know by now that, regardless of however ridiculous a subject might be, someone will write a song about it and put it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xMNSiuq2nk

[clarance]

Also, cartridges never had a (fantabulous) pop song written about them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_R0Kvk7G9U

Another point for cassettes methinks...

You should know by now that, regardless of however ridiculous a subject might be, someone will write a song about it and put it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xMNSiuq2nk

That wasn't fantabulous though...