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Story

Cartridge to disc

カセットから、ディスクへ

How changes in the vessel that carried software reshaped the scale and form of play.

14Media evolution

Cartridgeto disc.

ROM cartridges, disk cards, HuCARDs, CD-ROM and each maker's optical discs. As the vessel that carried software changed, so did the scale and shape of play.

  1. M-011983
    A Game Boy Game Pak cartridge

    ROM cartridge

    ROMカセット

    A software medium housing ROM chips on a circuit board inside a plastic shell. The Famicom used this format from its 1983 launch; Nintendo's Western packaging called them 'Game Paks'.

    Famicom launch title Donkey Kong: 192 kilobits (24 KB); Neo Geo cartridges later reached 716 megabits

    Family Computer / Neo Geo AES / Neo Geo Pocket / WonderSwan / SG-1000

  2. M-021986
    A Famicom Disk System disk card

    Disk Card

    ディスクカード

    The magnetic disk medium of the Famicom Disk System, based on Mitsumi's Quick Disk. Disks could be rewritten with a different game at in-store Disk Writer kiosks for ¥500.

    56 KB per side, 112 KB per disk

    Famicom Disk System

  3. M-031987

    HuCard

    HuCARD

    A thin, credit-card-sized ROM cartridge designed by Hudson Soft, introduced in 1987 as the PC Engine's software medium.

    1–20 Mbit (early cards up to 2 Mbit)

    PC Engine

  4. M-041988

    CD-ROM

    CD-ROM

    Optical discs sharing the audio CD format, used for data. Sources describe the PC Engine's CD-ROM² (1988) as the first use of CD-ROM as a home console game medium.

    Approx. 540 MB (as cited for CD-ROM²)

    PC Engine CD-ROM² System / PC-FX / Mega-CD / Neo Geo CD / PlayStation

  5. M-051994
    PlayStation Memory Card

    PlayStation Memory Card

    メモリーカード（プレイステーション）

    A flash-memory card for storing PlayStation save data. Its 1-megabit (128 KB) capacity is divided into 15 usable blocks.

    128 KB (1 Mbit), 15 blocks

    PlayStation / Neo Geo AES

  6. M-061998

    GD-ROM

    GD-ROM

    A proprietary optical disc developed by Sega and Yamaha for the Dreamcast. It could be mass-produced at a cost similar to CD-ROM, avoiding the expense of DVD-ROM.

    Up to 1 GB

    Dreamcast

  7. M-072000

    DVD-ROM

    DVD-ROM

    The primary software medium of the PlayStation 2, which could also play DVD films.

    PlayStation 2

  8. M-082001

    Nintendo GameCube Game Disc

    ゲームキューブ用光ディスク（8cm）

    An 8 cm proprietary optical disc based on miniDVD technology, created by Matsushita/Panasonic.

    1.46 GB

    Nintendo GameCube

  9. M-092004

    Universal Media Disc (UMD)

    UMD（ユニバーサル・メディア・ディスク）

    A roughly 64 mm optical disc developed by Sony for the PSP, used for games as well as films and music.

    Up to 1.8 GB (dual-layer); 900 MB single-layer

    PlayStation Portable

Years are the Japanese launch year of the console that used each format, per sources. Formats without a verified photograph are shown as diagrams.